Educational Values

At The Hacktory, we believe there is an innate satisfaction in understanding the objects and systems around us. We have found that the best way to understand these things is by re-purposing, de-coupling, breaking, and re-arranging them from their intended use. In this process of un-making and re-making, we find and create new meanings. We help people experience technology in ways that magnify the joy of understanding technology and making new things.

We participate in The Hacktory because…

We find joy in making art and artifacts to improve the lives of others, to communicate and express ourselves, and to extend the function of the objects around us. We believe that STEM¹ and art education, when practiced together, deepen curiosity for and reinforce learning of both.² We think everyone should have opportunities to learn by creating, and thereby to experience the natural joy of both.

The Hacktory does this by…

We offer access to knowledge, tools and materials to find the intersection between art and technology. Our craft reaches across many techniques of physical creation and intellectual practice. These might include programming, textiles, metalwork, design, electronics, fine art, engineering, sciences, and more. We seek to draw connections among all of these without elevating one above another. We foster personal connections to art and science, and assign equal value to both domains. We engage our participants with the assumption that everyone has something to learn and everyone has something to teach. We do this in a manner that is inclusive of all axes of identity, including age, expertise, profession, class, gender, race, orientation, and ability.

In our space we provide opportunities to learn and to teach in structured and unstructured environments. We embrace alternative models of learning. We recognize the value of building physical systems as a way of developing mental models of their functioning³. By bringing together peers with disparate skills, we encourage learning by watching what others are doing, and attempting to do it, thereby appropriating that knowledge to one’s own use⁴.

Finally, we aim to make our teaching materials available for others to use. Whenever possible, we compose them in a way that is clear, portable, extensible, and freely available for other people to download, adapt to their own context, and use.