India has always been home to scientific pioneers, but recent years has seen a shift towards an inclusion of creative and artistic values. There are some places, however, where both these fields come together and people who support these endeavours are working hard to make them a permanent fixture. The best example of that progress can be seen in the rise of Maker Culture.
Internationally and in India, Maker Culture emphasises the ability to share resources and knowledge to advance individual learning. From technology to art, every domain is covered and dedicated Makerspaces are where innovators and creators can gather to work as a community towards their goal. At Maker’s Asylum in Mumbai they believe in harnessing the collective talent pool and channeling their innovation towards social change.
Maker’s Asylum is a collaborative Makerspace bringing together engineers, architects, designers, artists, academicians, healthcare professionals to work on interdisciplinary projects through exploration and learning. As a designated FabLab, with centres in Mumbai and Delhi, Maker’s Asylum imparts weekly rapid prototyping and digital fabrication trainings, work working and electronic workshops in addition to community required and requested meetups, build groups and sponsored projects
In 2017 they set up a dedicated initiative called the S.T.E.A.M School which has been devised to encourage participants to use design thinking to solve ‘global sustainability challenges with local perspective.’ S.T.E.A.M is an acronym for Science, Technology, Electronics, Art and Math, and people from all skill backgrounds can apply, it’s been started in conjunction with Bonjour India, a French company whose goal is to ‘incubate dreams, ideas and projects moving the partnership between both countries into the future.’
Together the organisations are using their collective pool of talent and expertise to tackle some of India’s greatest social challenges and bringing the advantages of technology to those who need it most. Each edition of S.T.E.A.M school tackles a new aspect of daily life be it health, sanitation or education they are striving towards a better, more egalitarian future.