What the MakerSpace is
A makerspace is a shared workshop where people learn by making things. MakerSpace by DreamSpace Academy is a community makerspace designed so that it can be set up again in other places.
What DreamSpace Academy offers is the design of a unit (the list of equipment and the layout) and the standard it is run to. A local partner in a rural or underserved community provides the space and runs it as a social franchise.
In a MakerSpace people learn, make, solve and earn. What they learn there comes from DreamSpace Academy’s programmes. The franchisee, the local partner running the unit, runs them under a licence from the academy. The programmes come in under that licence. They are not part of what a MakerSpace is.
A makerspace is defined by the mix of subjects it brings together and by the maker mindset it builds, not by the machines it owns[2]. A modest rural unit that gets the culture right is a real makerspace. A well-equipped room where nobody makes anything is not.
A MakerSpace is not defined by age. The academy’s placement rule applies here as it does wherever the programmes run. A twelve-year-old on their first project and an adult coming back to retrain use the same space, the same standard and the same placement process. Where someone starts depends on what they can already show they can do.
Who provides what
The local partner provides the space, a site rooted in its own community. It also pays for setting up the unit, the equipment included, and runs it day to day. DreamSpace Academy provides the rest.
The design of the unit
The list of equipment and the layout. The Starter Unit, the basic set-up, covers electronics and soldering, 3D printing, a small CNC machine (a computer-controlled cutter) with a laser module, robotics kits and workbenches. The tools are chosen because they can be maintained locally, not because they impress. Ventilation and electrical setup are part of the design from the start, not added afterwards.
The brand
The MakerSpace by DreamSpace Academy name and identity, with guidelines for using them.
The operating standard
How the unit is run: procedures, rules for using machines safely, reporting, and regular quality reviews. These mean each unit can be held to the same standard as the next.
A licence to run the programmes
The right to run DreamSpace Academy’s programmes in the unit, with their curriculum, assessment and certification. It also gives access to the shared project bank, a common stock of projects that every unit draws on.
The page on replication explains how a unit is set up, who does what in full, and what has not been tried yet.
Programmes without a MakerSpace
The relationship runs one way. A MakerSpace depends on DreamSpace Academy for its brand, its standard and its programmes. Nothing in the academy depends on a MakerSpace.
- The academy’s education runs in schools, at partner sites, online and in the academy’s own spaces. That includes the STEAM programmes, with the four stages of the Changemaker Journey and the courses built on it. A MakerSpace is one more place it can run.
- A lab is a team of people who share a craft, with the skills and equipment that craft needs. A MakerSpace may host one, but no lab needs one, and labs are not part of the franchise.
- The venture pathway and incubation start from the academy, not from a MakerSpace.
- Results are reported against the academy’s results hierarchy, wherever the work happened.
What kind of place a MakerSpace is
In research terms, a MakerSpace is a maker-based innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem. Put simply, it is a community setting that supports people as they move from making things, to finding new answers to problems, to starting ventures of their own.
The idea draws on the maker movement and on constructionism, the theory that people learn best by building things. The programmes run there use project-based and challenge-based learning: learners work through projects and real challenges.
| Word | What it means here | Published grounding |
|---|---|---|
| Maker-based | Building real things that other people can use and share. | The maker mindset[2]; the maker movement in education[3]; where knowledge construction actually happens in maker education[4] |
| Innovation | Making aimed at a real local problem, producing something new for that setting. | Inclusive making and agency in engineering settings[27]; makerspaces as sites of social innovation[29] |
| Entrepreneurship | Turning solutions into products, services, livelihoods and ventures, with support from a network of people rather than a last module at the end of a course. | Makerspaces and entrepreneurial contribution[6, 32]; the entrepreneurship competence framework[36] |
| Ecosystem | A network of peers, mentors, partners and funders that keeps itself going, rather than a single programme with a start and an end. | Entrepreneurial ecosystems[34, 35]; communities of practice[8] |
Why it is called an ecosystem
A course has a cohort (a group that starts and finishes together), a syllabus, a completion date and a list of past students. An ecosystem has people who keep coming back, roles that overlap, and results that arrive years later by routes nobody planned.
Research on entrepreneurial ecosystems agrees on one point. What leads people to start ventures is the conditions around them (networks, finance, mentors, culture), not any single programme run on its own[34, 35].
So the MakerSpace puts time and effort into things a course would treat as extras:
- open making time that nobody assesses;
- past students who come back as facilitators;
- a room where someone holding a soldering iron for the first time can watch somebody else testing a product.
Research has found that in the later stages of maker programmes, when people build and grow what they have made, help from peers works better than structured teaching[26]. That is a reason to protect unstructured time rather than fill it.
The problem the MakerSpace addresses
Sri Lanka’s national statistics point to a specific problem. It is not quite the problem usually described.
The third figure is the reason for a shared workshop. Getting online is no longer the main barrier it once was. But some work cannot be done on a phone: computer-aided design, a laser cutter, a sensor board, a multi-track recording session, a complete software application. Where almost everyone goes online by phone, what is missing is a bench, a machine and someone who knows how to use them.
The jobs problem is more specific than a general shortage of work. In 2023, youth unemployment nationally was 23.0%, roughly five times the rate for all ages, and 58.0% of employment was informal[57].
But the same survey puts the Northern Province at the lowest youth unemployment of any province, 14.9%. Uva was at 34.4% and the South at 33.3%.
So the problem in the east and north is not simply too few jobs. What education certifies does not match what work requires. On top of that, there is a wide gap in access to the tools modern work is done with.
Two more national figures are part of the background. A national measure of vulnerability, which looks at many kinds of hardship together, rates the northern district of Mullaitivu as the most vulnerable in the country, at 72.4% in 2022-23[59]. The north and east face hardships that an employment rate alone does not show.
All of this comes during the country’s recovery from a severe economic crisis. Any claim about livelihoods in this period has to be read against that[60].
Multidimensional vulnerability and multidimensional poverty are different measures. They were taken in different years and measure different things. The academy never shows them one after the other as though they were a trend. A reader who sees both together would read a change over time that neither measure recorded.
DreamSpace Academy does not claim that this region has the highest youth unemployment in the country, because the national survey does not support that. The case rests on what the data does show: a large gap in access to the tools modern work needs, and a mismatch between what education certifies and what employers need.
A shared workshop deals with the first directly. The academy’s programmes deal with the second, wherever they run.
What a MakerSpace is built around
Assessment by what was made
Nothing here is graded against a national examination. Work is assessed against what was made, explained and improved.
Facilitation as well as equipment
Tools alone do not get people making. It also takes facilitation (someone guiding the group), a community and a standard. The equipment is the cheapest part of the whole set-up.
Placement by capability
There are no age groups, no levels limited by age, and no published typical age. Where someone starts depends on what they can show they can do.
Programmes licensed in
The programmes also run without a MakerSpace. A MakerSpace adds a place with tools and a standard. It does not own the teaching that happens in it.