Karkhana Makerspace

The lab is used for 3 main purposes. The first users are the students (8 to 14 years old) who come in the lab during the KIC (Karkhana Innovator’s Club) workshops - see our pedagogy/animation topic below. They use the space and the tools to animate the workshop. Teachers and mentors are of course always there to ensure that students learn while fabricating in security.

Today, around 50 students per week join one of the 5 workshops offered by the makerspace.

The second users are the teachers and mentors, who prepare the materials and tools for the workshops. They use the space, the laser cutter and the tools. A lot of preparation is required as they also give 10 workshops per week directly into schools.

The team is also about to launch a “creative computer kit”, to be sold. It’s a playful kit of development including an Arduino and many sensors and connectors to build fun things. The kit is assembled and some parts are fabricated in the lab. They are also creating and recording some videos tutorials in the lab to show examples of realizations with the kit.

Since end of last year, Karkhana has also been creating and hosting events in the lab, dedicated to knowledge and fabrication. They created the K-Space event in October 2016, to build new ways to teach space to kids. Seven countries were represented.

Karkharna makerspace was launched in 2014 with 10 000€ investment, funded by the co-founders themselves. From there, they rented the space, started to buy the materials for the workshops and the rest was done handly.

The business model is based on monthly membership paid by the children attending the workshops. Today, after 2 years of existence, they generate a revenue of 85 000€ per year, 60% through the Bee Creative workshops and 40% through the KIC.

Their annual budget approaches the same amount as revenues, making their profit neutral for 2016. They invest continuously to buy new machines (they bought a laser cutting machine), materials, and recruit and train new teachers. 40% of the budget is allocated to Human Resources (salaries/trainings), 15% to classes resources (materials…), 13% to operational costs, 13% to sales and marketing and 7% for the rent.

Every year the team has 2 strategic meetings to define the vision and objectives of the lab. This year, they target to double the number of students attending their workshops (3000 by the end of the year), and plan to recruit 14 new members to reach their goal.

Karkhana education’s programs are based on two different models of workshops:

1/ The Karkhana Innovators’ Club (KIC): an after-school workshop turning the classroom into a lab discovery. The sessions last between 8 to 12 weeks. All the workshops are built using story telling process to create playful challenges. Every Saturday morning, students gather in the lab for 3 hours to resolve them and develop their knowledge and technical skills. You can find some examples of the classrooms here.

2/ The Bee Creative (BC): These workshops are designed to take place inside schools. Teachers prepare all the materials in the lab and give 40 minute-classes where students learn concepts through making and building. You can find them here.

One important value of Karkhana is “we push boundaries in everything we do”. The education process used by the lab to design and teach learning experiences follows this path. It is called the Karkhana Wheel. Basically, every project or action must follow the Think, Make, Play, Improve (TMPI) process to ensure that development is executed, tested and improved continuously.

The lab’s team is composed of 9 full time people, 4 mentors, 27 mentees (future mentors learning how to teach a class), and 2 research interns. 3 main teams are composed around KIC, BC and for 2 months a “story telling” team in charge of building the communication of Karkhana. In 2017, 14 more teachers will be recruited to answer the growing demand of workshops.

There is no “open source” documentation, despite the communication on workshops and events made on social networks, relating what has been done. For Karkhana’s community, a vlog is also available including videos of workshops and tutorials to realize projects with the components of their electronic kit.

But the documentation process is very developed for the team. Every workshop is precisely documented step-by-step and available to all the teachers of the makerspaces. After each class, a debrief is made with the teachers and mentors to write “What Went Well” and “Improvement to Be Made”. Teachers write then the “story telling” of the workshops, accessible to the team.