Short answers to 37 questions people often ask, grouped by topic. Each answer links to the page that explains it in full.
A few questions do not have a settled answer yet. The clearest examples are whether certificates are accredited by an outside body, and whether the work leads to lasting income. Those answers say so, and say what DreamSpace Academy is doing about it.
About the organisation
What is DreamSpace Academy?
DreamSpace Academy is a non-profit social enterprise that co-creates an ecosystem to tackle local socio-economic and environmental challenges through education, innovation and entrepreneurship. It was founded in Batticaloa, Sri Lanka, in September 2018.
Is “social enterprise” a claim that you do not rely on grants?
No. Social enterprise describes how the academy is organised, not how the work is paid for. It is not a claim to be free of grants, and not an admission of depending on them. The work has been paid for in three ways: grants and partnerships; income from the training the academy provides and from client projects by its media lab and software lab; and the founders’ own capital. How much each one contributes has never been measured, so none of them is ranked above the others.
Where does education fit in the wider model?
Education is one of three pillars, alongside innovation and entrepreneurship, and it comes first: it is where people build the skills and support they need before anything else can happen. The STEAM programmes are one part of it; the academy also teaches business and entrepreneurship, digital security and teacher training. Education runs in schools, at partner sites, online and in the academy’s own spaces. A MakerSpace is one of the places it can run, not the place it belongs to.
How many labs and ventures do you have?
Neither number is published. A lab is only named when it has a making domain, a named person who maintains it, a team, and a date on which all of that was true. A count of ventures would need to say what role the academy played and which group of people the count is taken from. Until those conditions are met, a figure would be misleading.
What part of your model is not proven?
Whether this particular rural pathway leads to income that lasts. There is good evidence that entrepreneurship contributes to economic development. Whether this route, from making things to starting a venture, does the same, and for how many people, is a hypothesis. The academy’s measurement work exists to test it.
Which Sustainable Development Goals do you claim?
Nine, and each one is linked to specific work. Two came off the list recently: one was removed because the evidence did not fit the goal’s own definition, and one is held as stated intent because the outcome has never been measured. Both reasons are published.
What this is
What is MakerSpace by DreamSpace Academy?
It is a community makerspace that a local partner can set up and run as a social franchise. The partner provides the space. DreamSpace Academy provides the design of the unit (the equipment specification and layout), the brand, the operating standard and a licence to run its programmes there. The programmes do not need a MakerSpace: they also run in schools, at partner sites and online. Wherever they run, people learn by making things and working on projects and real local challenges. They explain and reflect on their work, and take on more of it by themselves over time.
Is it a school, a training centre, or a makerspace?
None of them exactly: the STEAM programmes borrow from all three. They are not a conventional classroom and not a computer lab. Learners work with tools, materials and other people, follow their interests, build real skills and work on problems that exist outside the room they are in.
What a MakerSpace does not do ,A makerspace is not a computer lab
How is this different from a normal classroom?
In the STEAM programmes, learners do not mainly listen and repeat. They make things, test whether they work, explain the decisions behind them, improve them, work with other people, and apply what they know to projects and challenges that have not been solved for them in advance.
What are the STEAM programmes?
They are the academy’s programmes in making, robotics, electronics, fabrication, and music and media making, including its programmes in government schools. Learners learn by designing, building, testing, repairing and explaining things they can hold, hear or use. Technology is one possible tool, never the point: a well-made piece of furniture, a recorded song and a working sensor all qualify. The STEAM programmes are one part of what DreamSpace Academy teaches, not the whole of its education. In the research literature, this way of learning is called maker education.
Joining
Who can join?
It depends on the course, the places available, safeguarding requirements and any stated prerequisites. Open Explorer experiences need no prior skill at all; structured courses use a placement check.
Is there a minimum or maximum age?
No age limit is used as an entry rule. Placement depends on what a learner can show they can do, not on age, and age is not used as a band or a label anywhere. Safeguarding and the legal duty of care still apply, and a particular course may have practical requirements for taking part.
Why age does not determine placement ,Placement instead of age
Does a learner need good school grades?
Usually not. What matters is what a learner can already do and what support they need. Where a structured course has prerequisites, a placement check tests for those directly rather than using school results as a stand-in.
How do you decide which level a learner starts at?
A placement check at the start of the course looks at what the learner already knows, what they can do and how independently they can work. Prior learning counts however it was gained (at school, at work, online, or from a relative who repairs things) and it does not need a certificate behind it.
What you can learn
What does DreamSpace Academy teach?
It runs the STEAM programmes: electronics, robotics, digital fabrication, music and media making, including term-based programmes in government schools. Alongside them the academy runs business and entrepreneurship training, startup bootcamps and a startup challenge; media and information literacy, digital security and digital marketing; and workplace English, leadership workshops, training of trainers and training for school teachers. Software and AI are taught as well, and whether they belong inside the STEAM programmes or beside them has not been decided.
What subjects do the STEAM programmes cover?
The subjects (called domains) documented so far are maker and fabrication, digital education, AI programmes, AI with electronics, software and tech-entrepreneurship, creative arts, and fitness and sport. Software and AI also overlap with the academy’s digital skills training, and where they belong has not been decided. The list can change: domains may be added, combined or retired. They are not all equally developed, and the programmes page says where each one stands.
Does everyone have to learn coding or robotics?
No. A learner may come in through craft, music, media, art, sport, coding, electronics or another available area, and those practices overlap, with technology supporting work across any of them. DreamSpace Academy keeps the domains under one roof because real problems are not single-subject and people arrive through different doors.
Why the domains sit together ,Why the music room is next to the electronics bench
The Changemaker Journey
What are Explorer, Maker, Innovator and Changemaker?
They are the four stages of the Changemaker Journey, the path learners follow in the STEAM programmes. Each stage describes what the work is for. Explorer is open discovery. Maker builds reliable skill in a chosen subject. Innovator aims that skill at a real problem. Changemaker is reached by producing work that came from a community, has been tested by a real user who is not on the project team, and that someone depends on.
Is everyone expected to become a Changemaker?
No. The stages describe possible routes, not a ladder everyone must climb. Leaving with a real skill, a finished project or a job is a complete outcome. Every stage is meant to record who left and where they went, rather than counting only the people who stayed. That record is not yet in place.
What is a “level”?
A level belongs to a course, inside the Maker stage. It has three parts: a description of what the learner can do, an expected number of learning hours, and a piece of work that can be assessed. It is never a label attached to a person: there is no such thing as “a Level 3 learner”.
How long does the journey take?
There is no single duration, and none is published. It depends on the course, what a learner already brings, the projects they choose and the evidence they produce. Progress depends on what a learner can show they can do, not on how long they have been enrolled.
Assessment and certificates
How are learners assessed?
From the Maker stage onward, work is judged against a published standard called the Definition of Done. The work has to show six things, in any order, among them a clear aim, a reasoned choice between options, and at least one improvement. A certificate also needs three kinds of evidence: the thing that was made, a talk-through of it, and a reflection, which may be written, spoken or recorded. Explorer work is not assessed.
Are there exams and marks?
Assessment centres on finished work rather than a written exam or a single mark. A learner shows what they made, explains how it works and why they made the decisions they did, and says what they would change.
What does a certificate prove?
It proves that the learner completed a named course and level, and it names the evidence used to judge the work. It stands for work that met a published standard, not attendance, which is why the standard is published.
Are the certificates nationally or internationally accredited?
Not as a system, and this is not yet settled. Unless a particular course names an accrediting body, a certificate should be understood as issued by DreamSpace Academy itself.
Trainers, facilitators and safety
Who teaches?
Trainers and facilitators, and one person is often both. A trainer is a content expert who teaches knowledge and skills directly and demonstrates safe practice. A facilitator is a process expert who coaches, asks questions, helps a group reach its own answers and connects people to others who know more. The balance changes as a learner becomes more skilled. Guidance is highest where knowledge is lowest, so structured teaching is a full part of the approach, used from the start.
How are learners kept safe around tools and equipment?
Every course publishes its tool, material and safety requirements. A learner only uses a piece of equipment once they have shown they are ready for it and the right supervision is in place. Safety requirements limit what a course may offer.
What happens when a learner struggles, or something fails?
The learner gets more help, and failure is treated as useful information as long as everyone stays safe. Trainers and facilitators can add instruction, demonstration, practice, feedback or help from other learners, and work can be improved before it is assessed. Improving the work is one of the six things assessment looks for, called Refined.
Outcomes, evidence and impact
Will this help a learner get a job or start a business?
It can help, though it cannot guarantee either. The programmes build hands-on, digital, creative, innovation and enterprise skills, and enterprise runs through the whole journey rather than being added at the end. Small income is a realistic near-term outcome. A sustained livelihood is a hypothesis the academy intends to measure rather than claim, and the follow-up that would measure it is not yet running. Nobody is promised a job, a business or an income.
How do you choose which community problems to work on?
The problem has to come from the community, not from a competition brief or a funder’s theme. Learners investigate the situation with the people affected, test whether the response is useful to a real user who is not on the project team, and a prototype on a bench is never counted as a solved problem.
How can a donor or partner tell whether this works?
By reading the results level by level: the academy reports activities, outputs, outcomes and long-term impact separately, so each can be read for what it is. Limitations are published alongside results. The academy also treats three things as different claims: what a curriculum says, what was actually delivered, and what has been checked independently.
What is this model’s biggest limitation?
There is no strong causal evidence that makerspaces improve long-term livelihoods in settings like this one, not in the academy’s own record, and not in the literature reviewed for this site. The academy’s approach is built to collect that evidence rather than assume it, and the registers and checks for doing so are published.
Taking part
What is running, where, and at what cost changes, so those answers come from DreamSpace Academy directly.
How do I find out what is running now, and where?
Courses, locations and dates change, so the current timetable is not published here. For what is open now (including places, dates, language of delivery, any fees or funded places, and accessibility arrangements) contact DreamSpace Academy at [email protected] or through dreamspace.academy.
What should I ask before enrolling?
Ask which course and level it is, what it costs and whether funded places exist, where and when it runs and in which language, what the placement check involves, what tools and materials are provided, what the safeguarding and supervision arrangements are, and what a learner leaves with. Every one of these is part of the published course specification, and a course that cannot answer them is not ready to be offered.
Is there support for learners with a disability, or who need another language?
Support is arranged course by course rather than through one policy for everything. Each course has to state its accessibility and language arrangements before it is offered. Raise the specific need when you enquire. It is a practical question about the room, the tools and the facilitator, and it is better answered before enrolment than after.
How can a parent, school, donor or community organisation get involved?
There are several ways: ask what is running now, visit where that is appropriate, propose a school or community partnership, contribute expertise, equipment or materials, or pay for places and teaching. The contact for all of these is [email protected].
Can this model be run somewhere else?
Yes. The programmes do not need a MakerSpace: they run in schools, at partner sites and online. A local partner that wants a dedicated space can set up a MakerSpace and run it as a social franchise, rather than as an unrelated space sharing a name. The academy provides the design of the unit, the brand, the operating standard and a licence to run its programmes there. Four things must stay the same everywhere: the completion standard, the stage definitions, the safety rules and the assessment method. The domains, language, timetable and problems worked on are decided locally.
How to ask a question that is not here
Send it to DreamSpace Academy directly. The questions on this page come from what people ask. If the answer is that something is not settled yet, the academy adds the question here and says so.