East Community Lab

Community Lab @ UWCSEA

At UWCSEA, we are fortunate to have some of the best Design and Technology facilities and teachers in the world. The rising popularity of this subject area indicates a strong interest in making, design thinking, creativity and problem solving amongst our students. 

Reflecting on the popularity of these elements of our learning programme and the challenge of accessing suitable spaces, especially for students not taking Design Technology as a chosen subject, from the theory that collaboration, creativity and making is fun but the space, resources, time and expertise are rare commodities for our communities, we developed a vision for a new space on the campus. From this vision came the idea for a space where people from our school community and the greater community of Singapore could gather to share resources and knowledge, work on projects, network, and build. A place where some tools, materials, and enough expertise could get people started on things they were curious about or ideas that were emerging from their imagination.

Makerspaces, The Makerspace Playbook

These spaces are often referred to as ‘Maker Spaces.’ Making, rather than consuming, is the focus and so there is often a strong sustainability focus on what occurs in these spaces. There are similar spaces already in Singapore. One of the pioneers of this community-centric model is Sustainable Living Lab. They have developed and currently run informal, playful spaces that allow projects to unfold, where communities can come together around the idea that anything is possible and with a mindset of community partnership, collaboration, and creation.

To make this space a reality we partnered with Sustainable Living Lab, who manage and run the space, independently but in full collaboration with UWCSEA. Their focus is on community activities and programmes so that we provide the maximum number of activities for all. 

Take a look at what happened during the Community Lab's first 100 days of the space at UWCSEA.

The following videos offer more information about makerspaces and the maker movement around the world:

Grand Center Arts Academy in St. Louis, Missouri, USA
Makerspace: Make Community, Jamie Leben at TEDxFrontRange
The maker movement, Jeff Sturges at TEDxMidwest
Makerspaces - The Future of Education, Marc Teusch at TEDxLuxembourgCity
For more information on the Community Lab @ UWCSEA contact:

UWCSEA:   John Zobrist, Head of Design and Technology Department

Sustainable Living Lab:  Arvin Febriyan  |  Veerappan Swaminathan

 

Community Hub

Community - sharing or having certain attitudes and interests in common

We have embarked on a project to create a central meeting point in the East Campus, and we hope that this facility will act as a focal point and provide a catalyst for many of the activities that bring us together as a community as well as tackling some of the practical challenges we have in operating the campus.

The community hub is envisaged as a two-storey building that occupies the area that used to be the cafe and related seating area. It will interface with the sports field to provide a social and meeting area for those involved in activities on the field as well as adding some toilet facilities. The hub will have a total seating capacity in excess of 250 people.

The ground floor will be an enclosed air conditioned space that will serve as an extension to the current seating area of the open air canteen and will this provide us with some more options for boarders and day students if we are unlucky enough to be cloaked in haze again! We expect the facility to be open and available to the community in term 2 of this coming academic year.