What a lab is, and what it is used for
A lab at DreamSpace Academy is made up of people who share a craft, a facilitator who keeps the work going, and the equipment the craft needs.
A lab belongs to the academy, not to a building. It can run at the academy’s own premises, at a partner’s site or online. A MakerSpace may host one, but no lab needs a MakerSpace, and labs are not part of what a MakerSpace franchise includes.
The academy uses its labs in three ways. Some of these have much more evidence behind them than others.
Young people’s projects
Young people work on real problems here and build their own solutions, and a project can become a candidate for a venture. This is the main use, with years of work behind it.
Applied research by the academy
A small local research team that works from a problem, to its root cause, to a tested solution. This is a plan, not yet a track record.
A partner for universities
Supervised use of equipment, a community field site, and a supply of real local problems. This is also a plan: no formal agreement is in place yet.
What counts as a lab
No standing list of labs is published here, and the default count is zero. A lab is named only when it has all four of these at the same time:
- A making domain: a craft, the equipment it needs wherever the lab runs, and something it has made that people can point at.
- A named maintainer: a person, not a role.
- A team, because a lab with one champion closes when that person leaves.
- A date on which all of this was true.
So the academy can say “as of this date, this lab is running, maintained by this person”. It never says “the academy runs n labs”.
A count of zero does not mean no work is happening. Software, media and music work goes on without a standing lab. Electronics and mechanics are practised together, not as two separate labs.
One lab closed because nobody could be found to keep it running. Another closed when the one person championing it left. Neither closed for lack of equipment, and both produced work before they stopped.
The clearest lesson in the record is that people, not equipment, decide whether a lab survives. That is why a named maintainer and a team are needed before a lab opens.
Artificial intelligence literacy, meaning a basic understanding of what AI is and how to use it, is not a lab or a stage. It runs through all of this work. It has no maintainer and no team of its own, so calling it a lab would create a lab that exists only on paper.
How a project runs
A lab project works on a real local challenge, and it is judged by the same standard as any other assessed work. The aim is stated, options are considered, something is made, and it is tested, shared and improved, in whatever order the work needs.
The steps below carry on past the prototype, which is where most maker programmes stop.
| Step | What happens |
|---|---|
| Local challenge | The problem comes from the community, and is shaped using design thinking. |
| Open innovation | Where an open, freely shared solution already exists, use it and work with the people who made it, instead of building it again. |
| Research and development | Build a prototype, test it with the people affected, and improve it. |
| Local manufacturing | Use local materials and local service providers. This is where local work is created. |
| Go to market | Run a pilot with the people involved, on a business model that shares the benefit with everyone who contributed. |
To move on to the venture track, a project needs three things:
- a tested prototype that solves a confirmed local problem;
- proof that the community wants it;
- somebody committed to taking it forward.
A project that does not reach that bar stays a learning project. It is still part of the evidence, and it often helps a later group of learners.
What lab projects have produced
Documented lab projects include:
- a digital-fabrication build;
- a circular plastic recycling machine;
- a rice biosensor that won gold at an international synthetic-biology competition in 2020;
- a COVID-response tool;
- a biofilter for removing cadmium, a toxic metal;
- a hydroponics project (growing plants without soil);
- an underwater glider that was named in the Parliament of Sri Lanka in 2021;
- a Tamil hate-speech detector, built in an open collaboration;
- a mycelium biocomposite (a material grown from fungus);
- a biogas digester.
This is the part of the academy’s work with the strongest evidence behind it. But a list of prototypes is not a list of solutions that somebody depends on. What separates the two is the gate.
Work can also leave a lab as a venture, but only once the lab pays its own way. A plan to become self-funding is enough to open a lab. Actually paying its own way is what allows a venture to form from it.
That has happened once on the record. The media lab became self-funding first, and only then was DreamSpace Productions formed from it as a separate venture.
The academy’s own research
As well as supporting other people’s projects, the academy plans to use the same people and equipment for small, local research of its own. Each piece of research would follow three steps:
- Identify a real local problem.
- Find its root cause before building anything.
- Develop and test a solution, using open designs where they exist.
The middle step is what makes it research rather than tinkering. It is also the cheapest point at which to avoid building the wrong solution.
Research runs on two tracks. Technical research covers devices, materials, software and systems. Business and social research covers business models, value chains, social innovation, policy questions and evaluation.
A prototype that works technically still needs a tested way to reach buyers and to benefit people. That is what the business and social track is for. Its work happens through fieldwork and analysis, not in a workshop.
Open-source scientific hardware, whose designs are freely shared, keeps the cost low. It has been found to cost about 87% less on average than commercial lab equipment, leaving labour out of the comparison[69]. Labour costs less in a low-wage rural area, so the comparison holds up better there, not worse.
Universities: what each side offers
The academy can offer a rural university what it usually lacks: access to equipment, a community field site, and a steady supply of real local problems. A university can offer what the academy lacks: research supervision, students, careful research methods and academic standing.
Two well-known models already fit that exchange, so neither side has to invent one:
- In a science shop, students research problems raised by community groups and other civil-society organisations, as part of their coursework. A university supervises them, and there is usually no charge[70].
- A living lab is a wider partnership. A university works with companies, citizens and public bodies to develop solutions together, as a full partner rather than a visitor[71].
The first step would be a small science-shop pilot: one department, a handful of supervised students, one live local problem.
What is proven and what is still a plan
The first use, young people building things to solve real problems, has years of documented work behind it. The second and third uses, the academy’s own research and work with universities, are plans. They are based on established models, but they have no track record yet. No formal agreement with a university has been signed.
Almost all of the strong evidence on makerspaces as places for research comes from Europe and North America. One systematic review looked at ninety-three living labs run by universities: four per cent were in Africa and four per cent in Asia.
So DreamSpace Academy is not following a proven method for running a rural research hub, because none was found. It is joining these models, adapting them, and building its own evidence over time.