Brighton Mini Maker Faire is taking a break

Brighton Mini Maker Faire. Photographs: Kati Byrne / Developing Dreams

We’re taking a break!

There are no plans to hold a Brighton Mini Maker Faire in 2016.

We’ve been putting on events every year since 2011, and had an amazing time in the process. We’ve met many inspirational makers, seen some incredible projects, and learned about everything from crochet to welding. We love meeting the makers every year, and seeing how visitors enjoy the experience.

However, putting on the event is also a mammoth task, and meanwhile life goes on. Members of the project team have been busy getting new jobs, having babies, putting on other events, starting businesses, doing PhDs, and making radio shows. Fitting in an event of this scale around other commitments, is not something we can do sustainably in the long term.

So it is with heavy hearts, but also some relief, that we’re taking a break. We don’t know how long for, but certainly while we put some energy into other things.

We hope you’ve had a great time coming to Brighton Mini Maker Faire, whether as a maker or visitor, and we’d urge you to check out one of the other Maker Faires or similar events which happen around the country, many of which you can find here, or even start your own.

Would you like to see Brighton Mini Maker Faire happen again?

While we’re stepping back for the foreseeable future, we would like to see BMMF happen again, and we’d be delighted to help others make it happen. We have some pretty good systems in place to help things run smoothly; we’ve figured out some things that work, and some things that don’t. There is also a big community of people who have volunteered for BMMF, sponsored us, provided advice or services, and helped in many other ways, who would also be happy to contribute again. If you’d like to see it happen again, there are two things that are essential to making a Maker Faire:

1. A lead producer (or production team)

BMMF has always been a distributed effort, but it takes one person to co-ordinate and take responsibility for making it happen. When we started, we had no money or experience, and we figured it out, so if you have energy, time and commitment, you can too. If you’re that person, or you could form a tight team with one or two others, do get in touch.

2. Money

Even run on a shoestring, the event costs many £1000s to put on, and we simply can’t cover it through ticket sales. We have had great support from those in the arts, tech and maker communities in the past, but the event needs a more significant level of financial support to make it viable. If you can make this happen, again, please do get in touch. Have a look at our sponsorship information pack.

Thank you

Now would be a good time to say thanks to some of the people who’ve supported us along the way. So, in no particular order, and with apologies for any omissions, we’d like to say a huge thank you to:

All the makers, of course!
All the project team who’ve helped make Brighton Mini Maker Faire over the last 5 years: Mike, Jo, Emma, Amy, Developing Dreams (Kati, Julia and Inessa), Rob, Alastair, Rowan, Ant, Anna, Barney, Toby, Nat, Caley, Samuel, Naomi, Georgina, Clare, Sam, Paula, Simon and Ruth (and probably one or two others…). Well done us.
All the lovely volunteers who’ve pitched in on the day to help make it a wonderful experience for our visitors. You have been awesome.
All the visitors who came, spread the word, made a donation, or helped make it a special day for us and our makers.

Graham and co. at O’Reilly
Sabrina, Sherry and Dale at Maker Media
Richard at Semantico
Simon, Declan and the team at Maker Club
Andy and the team at Maplin
Rebecca and Simon at Create
Julia and co. at Yelp
Jo at the University of Brighton
Jesse, and everyone who’s part of Brighton Digital Festival
Jon, the other Jon and Peter at Arts Council England
The guys and gals at Build Brighton, and in makerspaces around the UK
Josh, Tim, Tijana, the stellar production team, and everyone at Brighton Dome
Literally everyone at Bare Conductive
Bethany, Kirsty and the team at Technology Will Save Us
Jane, David and the team at Sugru
Dominic and Martin at Just Add Sharks
Our many sponsors through the years: Computer Arts Society, Beta Layout, Folksy, Kendall Copywriting, Nixon McInnes, Radical Robot, Revolution Education, Curious Chip, Omotayo, Carbon Frog, Chikai and others mentioned elsewhere
Maff for the flyer and t-shirt design
Andy at Sideline for the T’s
Emily at Stanley James Press for the zine
Roberta for the event photography
Curtis for the Makers at Work show
All the filmmakers we’ve worked with: Angus at Loaded, Jay at Make Moving Messages, Philip at Larchmont, and Frit and Liam at Think Again
Branwen at BHCC
Andy at Clearleft
Honor, Miriam and the team at Lighthouse
Greg at The Brighton Independent
Nilden and the team at Ozkan Accountants
Vicki and her team at Fugu PR
Matt at Storythings
Everyone in the UK Maker Faire community, and those around the world who are supporting their local maker communities

Thanks again, on behalf of the Brighton Mini Maker Faire team,
Andrew

Photograph by Roberta Matis

Brighton Maker Faire Call for Sponsors

Would you like to be part of the growing global Maker Faire Movement that has been spreading like wildfire with more than 100 events acting like giant magnets determined to prove Einstein’s general theory of relativity, drawing in more than 700,000 punters?

Maker Faire Growth Chart 2014

Behind the Scenes of Brighton Mini Maker Faire 2015

Ever wondered how the Brighton Mini Maker Faire pops up every year? It might seem like magic, but there’s actually a team of organisers and volunteers dedicated to herding all those brilliant makers into one place and raising funds to make the Maker Faire happen.

Our producer Emma’s written a blog post giving a behind-the-scenes look at the production of this year’s Brighton Mini Maker Faire: you can check it out on her blog.

Highlights from Brighton Mini Maker Faire 2015

Highlights from makers, punters, and the team on the social media sphere on Brighton Maker Faire on Storify, a report on ITV News, SENSEries on BBC Sussex’s Danny Pike show, photo album on Developing Dreams and many more across the world wide web.

Thanks go out to all makers, creators, inventors, volunteers and sponsors for making Brighton Mini Maker Faire such a fantastic experience and flag ship event of Brighton Digital Festival.

Keep the spirit of making and creating alive!

The Brighton Mini Maker Faire team

(Andrew, Emma, Jo, Kati, Amy, Alastair, Mike, and Inessa)

Brighton Maker Faire 2015 highlights – photo album by Kati Byrne / Developing Dreams

Lineup for 5th Brighton Mini Maker Faire announced

Fancy a ride on a baby buggy powered by a golf caddy? Or would you rather like to shoot paint with a giant art cannon or let your clothes play a song? With makers and tinkerers from fields of all kinds such as felt-making, drawing comics, engineering and electronics, jewellery, and knitting, we are getting very excited with our line up of more than 100 amazing projects this year.

We are the biggest festival combining arts, craft, science and technology in the South East. Our faire was the first ‘Mini’ Maker Faire in the UK and it’s still the biggest in the country. More than 3,000 people came to the Corn Exchange last year to experience the fascinating mix of mind-boggling creations and inventions.

Brighton Mini Maker Faire highlights from 2014. Photo credit: Kati Byrne / Developing Dreams

Contribute to our Maker Zine

Each year, as part of Brighton Mini Maker Faire, we produce a magazine called Hot Glue. It’s full of maker projects, articles and inspiration to help people carry on making at home. We’re now looking for contributors for our 3rd issue.

The theme for this year’s issue is Curiosity

How can making help us understand the world around us?
How are things made, why are they made that way, and how can we make them differently?
How do materials behave, how do things fit together, and what happens if you put them together differently?

Hot Glue features a mix of projects, editorial and illustration:

• Accessible projects, experiments and activities across a range of tech and crafts, from fabric crafts to simple electronics, using materials and tools that are easy to find, cheap or free, or recycling stuff you may already have around you. They might be projects you can do alone, or in your school, with your kids (or your parents). Maybe useful stuff, maybe just fun.
• Articles about making, what it means to you, personal stories and pieces on tools, technology and materials.
• Criticism, opinion and provocation on what making is, the maker movement and where it’s going.

We pay contributors a fee for original submissions, or if you have a piece published elsewhere under a suitable licence, we’re happy to look at republishing. We also want to hear from anyone else who can support us with illustrations, photography, distribution or sponsorship.

If you’re interested, send a short (1 sentence) outline of your idea to andrew@makerfairebrighton.com

Makers at Work exhibition

With Brighton Mini Maker Faire 2014 only just over, it’s time to focus on our next event. In October, as part of Brighton Photo Fringe, we’ll be showing an exhibition of photographs by Curtis James, called Makers at Work.

There are full details on our exhibition page, so please check it out.

We’re also having a special opening event on Thursday 2nd October in the giant yellow tent inside Circus Street Market (map here). Its an opportunity to see the work first, meet the photographer and some of the makers he photographed. And have a drink too.

We hope you can join us. If you’d like to come, it’s free, but we do have limited space, so please get a ticket here, so we know you’re coming.

The exhibition itself has limited opening hours for 2 weeks in October, so be sure to pop down before it’s gone.

Brighton Mini Maker Faire – What did you think?

Thank you for coming to Brighton Mini Maker Faire. What a day! We hope you enjoyed it.

We’d like you to tell us what you thought about it, to help us make it even better next year:

Take the survey

As a special thank you, if you submit your survey by 15th September, we’ll enter you into a prize draw to win some cool maker goodies, including Littlebits Starter Kits, Make Magazines and Project Notebooks and more, courtesy of Littlebits, O’Reilly and Make. We’ll pick 5 winners and notify you by email (so make sure you include your email address on the survey).

Sharing your day

We’d love to see any photos, blog posts, podcasts, videos or feedback you have about the day.

Brighton Mini Maker Faire 2014 highlights

//storify.com/MakerFaireBTN/brighton-mini-maker-faire-2014-wrap-up/embed?border=false[View the story “Brighton Mini Maker Faire 2014 wrap up” on Storify]

The night before #BMMF

[View the story “The night before Brighton ‘Mini’ Maker Faire #BMMF” on Storify]