Challenge #5 with Brightmoor Makerspace

In a world where furniture gets delivered, water gets bottled, and homes come pre-assembled, we can get really disconnected from building our own stuff. But in Brightmoor, Bart Eddy and his crew at the Brightmoor Makerspace, a collection of buildings on the Detroit Community Schools campus that have been transformed into different workshops, have created a place where building your own stuff feels more accessible than ever. At the start of this project, our team sought to talk to as many stakeholders as possible to find out what drew students to the Brightmoor Makerspace 

When you ask students in Brightmoor about Bart Eddy, they are overcome with excitement. “Being around Mr. Eddy showed me that I had a voice,” said Kyle Baker, one of Eddy’s original students at the Brightmoor Makerspace, As we spoke to more students, they all echoed the sentiments of Kyle. The Brightmoor Makerspace gave students a sense of accomplishment.

Growing up in Brightmoor, the students told us, doesn’t always present you with a lot of options to express yourself. The appeal of the Brightmoor Makerspace isn’t just the opportunity to build benches or repair bikes, it’s the sense of healing and accomplishment that one gets after putting their all into a project and creating something from scratch. In the words of a student at the Makerspace,”you gain a great sense of pride in the work that you do.”

These conversations showed us that our greatest impact could come in helping Brightmoor Makers to amplify the voices that we heard in our many stakeholder interviews. Alongside Bart and his team, our team – Rachel,  Zane,  Dillon, and myself (Jacob) – created a set of programs that we hope will harness the passion the Brightmoor students have for their work by additional streams of creativity. We have created a student-led blog, Writemoor, that will highlight stories from the workshop and a Makers Stories portfolio program that will assist students in documenting their work. A mentorship program called Makers R Back will connect the passionate Makerspace alumni with current students while a yearly showcase called Made By Brightmoor will allow current students to share their work with their community.

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