[open-science] Advice for starting an open community lab/biomakespace?

Mon Nov 30 13:59:57 UTC 2015

Hi Jenny,

We can certainly talk about Makespace Cambridge (which I cofounded) but
perhaps you are looking for something more focussed on biolabs?  The
hackerspaces.org wiki has some guidance https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/ and
of course FabLabs, one model, are pretty well documented. There's a
definite lack of written help out there, mostly because community spaces
are often run on volunteer labour and/or are stretched in resource just to
get open and keep operating, and writing up is dull :)

The RSA is doing some work on this eg
https://www.thersa.org/discover/videos/rsa-insights/rsa-insights-makerspaces/
and there's an event this Wednesday with livestream
https://www.thersa.org/events/2015/12/rsa-makers-summit-2015/  Following
the Maker Assembly earlier this autumn I hope there will be some further
activity on UK makerspace processes/admin etc...

Nesta has a dataset about existing spaces which might have useful pointers
to further info if you can find relevant spaces to draw upon:
http://www.nesta.org.uk/uk-makerspaces-data and there's the UK hackspaces
list too: http://www.hackspace.org.uk/wiki/Main_Page

Finally, the classic advice for creating community workshop spaces in
creating the right framework is to start from your community, work out what
you all need, and then fit something to that. There's almost as many ways
of running a space as there are spaces, and one size does not fit all. Best
to find some spaces that feel like they have similar communities, and get
inspiration from them.

Best of luck!

Laura

On 30 November 2015 at 07:19, Jenny Molloy <jenny.molloy at okfn.org> wrote:

> Dear All
>
> I have an exciting opportunity to start a community biology lab here in
> Cambridge (UK), which would be fantastic for several local projects we've
> got going around open technologies (which I should definitely share in more
> detail soon!).
>
> Has anyone set up a biohackspace/makespace/community lab and could you
> send me any examples of governance documents, figures for number of
> members, information on how you keep such a space sustainable financially
> and anything else you have that could feed into our deliberations on how to
> run the space?
>
> I've found one site from GenSpace which is really useful
> http://openlab-blueprint.org/ but it'd be good to see if their solutions
> have worked elsewhere.
>
> Things are moving quite quickly so apologies for the rushed email! I'd be
> delighted to talk to anyone who can offer advice so while publicly posted
> documents would be best and most helpful for others, if it's more
> convenient to chat then just get in touch!
>
> Jenny
>
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