Hasta La Ideas

Everything in the built world has been designed and crafted by someone. This is not news to most of us, but I’m amazed that even as engineering and design have taken more visible roles in shaping how we experience the world, there are still so many who see themselves as consumers, not makers.

We Are Makers is a new short film that explores the workshops and institutions shaping a new generation of makers and designers. It’s the first documentary on the Maker Movement—a global cultural shift aimed at empowering more people to create. Most of the film was shot on location in New York last spring in places like the School of Visual Arts, NYC Resistor and the New York Hall of Science. But it wasn’t at all clear from the beginning that the film would take the shape it eventually did.

I work with a team of media producers and storytellers at Abilene Christian University, and when we were approached to produce a film on making in education, the goal was purely local, something focused on our immediate community. Faculty and staff at ACU were planning a large digital fabrication space to support engineers, designers and makers on campus, and the film we produced would essentially make the case for this new idea. Over the course of several interviews in just a couple of weeks, we realized we were tapping into a broader story about the full spectrum of makers in museums, hacker clubs, design schools, creative businesses and communities everywhere.

It’s clear today there’s a growing emphasis on craftsmanship and a return to making with the hand, that we can and should reclaim this somehow-forgotten part of our human identity. But I’ve noticed there’s a certain complexity to this new movement that distinguishes it from past eras of DIY and craft. This is an open movement. It blurs the lines between disciplines, it encourages the generalist, and it seeks to bring together makers of all kinds. Today, the focus is on increasing access. It’s about fostering a universal sense of creativity, and it’s about making sure the tools are within reach for everyone.

In our visits with Dale Dougherty of Make Magazine, Allan Chochinov of SVA and Core77, Liz Arum of MakerBot and the others we’ve captured in the film, it quickly became clear this was not really a story about tools or places; the human element took center stage. It’s not hard to imagine how this struck us. As makers ourselves, immersed daily in the creative process, this project felt deeply personal and intimate in an uncanny way: this was also a story about us.

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