Hello maker community! Our nation is a few weeks into COVID-19 diagnoses, and already reeling from the impact. In addition to your physical health, we encourage you to stay mentally and emotionally healthy. For many of us, that means making! Below are some resources, ideas, inspirations, and ways you can make a difference during this time.
 #LYHMakerWeek
Beginning Sunday, March 22 and running through March 28, LYH Maker Week will highlight Lynchburg's creative community with an annual social media celebration. Four prompts throughout the week encourage you to share your creative passion. Follow along to see what your peers are making, and join in, too!
#AntisocialArtShow
Our friends at Airigami are taking making online, with a virtual art show. Snap a pic of your project and post to instagram with the hashtag #antisocialartshow to join the fun. Again, check out what other makers around the world are creating, and add your own project! You can always tag @vectorspacehq and #lynchburgmakes for local sharing as well.
COVID-19 Maker Responses
It's no secret that makers are resourceful. This list, currated by the leadership at Nation of Makers, is a way to use your skills for good during this time of uncertainty. From 3D printed face shields to the N95 mask challenge, there are several ways to get involved in COVID-19 response via making.
Straight Talk with Starters
The entrepreneurial hustle can be isolating on a good day. We know you have concerns about your business, and Co.Starters is here to help talk it out. These online meetings are a time for entrepreneurs to come support each other and brainstorm ideas for moving forward. The Makers + Service Providers chat will happen virtually on Wednesday, 3/25/20 @ 2pm EDT. Click here to register.
Projects for Self-Sufficiency
Make: has your next coronovirus project idea ready for you. From kitchen hacks to garden starters and more, these tutorials will keep you entertained and taken care of.
Reach Out
We're here for you! Start a thread on our Facebook page, in the LYH Makers Forum, or send us a DM. If you need help during this time, get in touch. You can email info at vector-space.org to reach either of the Spontarellis, who are happy to connect you with even further community resources.
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 Makerversity: Postponed until Summer 2021
Due to COVID-19 travel restictions and safety concerns, our Makerversity program has been postponed until Summer 2021. Curriculum and instructors are subject to change, but what will remain is our commitment to exciting, engaging, hands-on experiences for rising college students.
After four years of hosting some of the nation's most immersive and exciting maker camps for Central Virginia students, Vector Space is now opening enrollment to a national audience. We are excited to partner with Cognizant and Randolph College to offer one of the nation's top boarding camps for makers. Our programming combines in-depth examination of materials, and the use of exciting new technologies and some of human kind's oldest fabrication techniques. Each camp is taught by leading maker educators recruited from around the country. Each of our three one-week camps has just ten student spots available, ensuring an amazing personalized learning experience for each camper. Read more below to learn how rising college freshmen can spend the best summer of their lives learning and making at Vector Space. 
Makerversity Boarding Camp Schedule
Week 1 - TBD, July 2021
Wake Up: Learn to tell time by making an electronic alarm clock
Week 2 - TBD, July 2021
Get Dressed: Make your dorm loungewear from scratch
Week 3 - TBD, July 2021
Take Notes: Make a pen and a journal, starting from the beginning
About These Camps
The task of the college student can feel overwhelming. Sent hundreds of miles from home into an environment unlike any they have experienced before, expected to live independently while simultaneously tasked with learning the depths of thermodynamics and calculus. Navigating dorm furniture, food plans, a laptop with decent wifi connection, and parking passes. But at its core, the task is simple: the student must wake up, get dressed, and take notes. Our student to teacher ratio is capped at 5:1, which means these camps of ten students each will be lead by two maker educators who will be assisted by community volunteers and knowledgeable guest speakers. A local cultural guide, versed in art, history, and the culture of Central Virginia, will accompany students to evening activities. To read more about our educational philosophy at Vector Space and how we are changing the future of youth in our programs, click here.
 About Vector Space
Vector Space is a nonprofit makerspace: a physical place for people interested in science, technology, engineering, art, and math to collaborate, invent, discover, and build the things that interest them. Our mission is to build an open and collaborative community that fosters innovation, creativity, and the pursuit of science-based knowledge.
The makerspace is member-based for adults, and offers workshops for teens and adults. During and after school maker education programs are offered throughout the school year and during summer months. Our classes, workshops and projects inspire members to share knowledge, learn from each other, and mentor others. Each lesson is hands-on and taught by local makers and professionals: professors, engineers, graphic designers, woodworkers, computer scientists and more. Vector Space a is nonprofit organization managed by a Board of Directors and organized exclusively for educational and scientific purposes as defined by section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
Lynchburg, Virginia
Lynchburg, Virginia is a small city of 80,000 residents, nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains and bordered by the beautiful James River. Like many former trade and manufacturing cities across America, ours is undergoing tremendous growth and revitalization after a devastating mid-century move towards suburbs and strip malls. In the last twenty years, Lynchburg residents are slowing beginning to look back up at the historic facades that have been mostly preserved, and are remembering a history of thriving maker businesses in downtown.
Vector Space is located in Lynchburg’s historic and vibrant downtown district. Locally owned storefronts, coffee shops, eateries, and more offer unique and memorable opportunities year round. Multiple new restaurants and retail spaces are opening each year, while natural beauty remains accessible within city limits on the river, the rails-to-trails bike path, and along miles of beautiful hiking trails. Our home on 5th Street, formerly the thriving center for African American businesses, was once an abandoned retail area with high crime rates but has come back to life with the opening of the makerspace, restaurants, and small storefronts that have either survived the worst or returned to find a corridor almost reminiscent of its bustling past. Lynchburg is the home of five colleges and universities and the median age of residents is 28.7, providing a young audience invested in craft food, local culture, and meaningful objects and experiences.
Our Sponsor
This program is generously funded by Cognizant's Making the Future program, which seeks to inspire young learners to pursue science, technology, engineering and math disciplines by creating fun, hands-on learning opportunities.
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 Join the Vector Space team and compete in this year’s nationwide Youth Biomimicry Challenge, where we'll take inspiration from nature to solve man-made problems. Learn about different systems and processes in nature and use them to design solutions that mitigate climate change. This project will combine engineering, prototyping, documentation, and record taking, before submitting our project to the official competition.
More information and registration is available at: https://vector-space.org/biomimicry
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This semester, four students from the Empowerment Academy spent their Wednesday afternoons at Vector Space launching their own businesses. Trianna, Jayla, Michael, and Jamar each came up with a business idea, acquired materials using their alloted budget, and produced a line of products. Using skills and inspiration gained at the makerspace, spent time identifying a customer, researching the market, and then got to work designing and building their line of products. Some students used digital tools to design and produce their items, while others sketched plans and got to work with hand and power tools. Hear more for each student below, and come see the results of their hard work this Saturday, Dec 14, at the Lynchburg Community Market in downtown.
 From Trianna: In my semester at Vector Space I started a business called Glowbies. I went online to find my ideas but I created my own twist. I used acrylic for my design on the laser cutter. I feel like everything was easy except the measurement part and how much time we had, but I had fun. Now that I have done this I want to coutinue my business and create things for the world to see.
From Jamar: This semester we went to different resturants for menu design ideas. We came up with three types for Grey's. Which are wood, plastic, and acrylic. I think they look amazing and restaurants will like it. I learned how to use a laser cutter, and I recreacted the menu using Inkscape.
From Jayla: In my semester at Vector Space we started J.L.C., Jays Luxurious Creations, and my idea was chairs for children. Now that the holiday is coming families will need extra seating and play seats for the kids. My creation is made of wood with comfy seat cushions and the decoration is fun and kid-like. Since i started this program I have gotten better with my wood working skills, using all types of tools, and I plan to go on in the future doing more.
From Michael:
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 We are excited to announce an expansion, with work beginning next month! Since opening at 402 Fifth Street in Spring 2015, we have expanded once before in 2017, refinishing the unoccupied second floor of the building. Now we will work with landlord Riverfront Warehouse to incorporate nearly 4,000 additional square feet at 406 Fifth Street.
An internal double doorway will connect the two spaces and membership access will include both buildings. The additional space will house a newly expanded woodshop, as well as private office and studio spaces. This additional space will ensure safe working conditions for growing membership numbers and allow for new educational programming. Membership is currently at 92 individuals, with enrollment for new members open again in January. Vector Space serves more than 300 local students in project-based classes and workshops each year. New summer camp offerings will be available this summer, expanding the reach and depth of educational programming.
FAQs
Are you moving?
No. We will remain at 402 Fifth Street, adding 406 Fifth Street as additional workspace. An internal double doorway will connect the two spaces and membership access will include both buildings. Once finished, the makerspace will total close to 12,000 square feet.
What are the plans for expansion?
The additional space will house a newly expanded woodshop, as well as private office and studio spaces. During December we will make electrical updates and a few infrastructure improvements. Woodshop equipment will be moved in late December and up and running by early January.
How can I support this growth?
As you plan your year end giving, consider a monetary gift to Vector Space. Some of our operational costs are covered by earned income from membership and classes, but this earned income supports only 40% of our expenses. Individual donations, grants, and corporate giving allow us to provide outreach opportunities, scholarships, and the very best in maker education for youth and adults in our community.
>> CLICK HERE TO MAKE A DONATION <<
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Words from our Director of Education
Education inside a community makerspace overcomes many of the struggles of traditional education, including the propensity for overspecialization and isolation of content. It happens in schools that separate subject areas by hallways and in universities that use entire buildings to keep the humanities distanced from sciences. And with even more severity, entire institutions are used to keep the academic separate from the vocational. It’s an approach that has no doubt been successful in creating division between these worlds, generating pride in our overspecialization and resentment toward the others as we fail to communicate across boundaries. What we’re left with are specialists; programmed to perform specialized tasks when given specialized inputs. It has become commonplace for a practicing engineer to have never held a thermocouple or repaired a motor. People who are expected to design things are no longer expected to have built things and the result is a troubling lack of understanding. Rarely can the mechanical engineer work on their own failing automobile transmission, and rarely can the electrician program a simple microcontroller. Great thinkers and innovators need relevant hands-on experience to solidify their academic learning, and at Vector Space, we make it our goal to merge these worlds.
B ut to stop at what people can and can’t do in their isolated worlds would fall short of identifying a deeper problem. Worse is what we fail to even think about, let alone attempt to learn and understand. Consider the man-made inventions most important in your life, then imagine not having them. Clocks, clothes, pen and paper; most of us think of these things as trivial and unworthy of our attention until we don’t have them. This isn’t a new observation nor one that only plagues the uneducated. Carter G. Woodson recognized the problem a century ago, speaking of his highly educated peers, “Unless they happen to become naked they never think of the production of cotton or wool; unless they get hungry they never give any thought to the output of wheat or corn; unless their friends lose their jobs they never inquire about the outlook for coal or steel, or how these things affect the children whom they are trying to teach. In other words, they live in a world, but they are not of it.” Little seems to have changed; so few of us know anything about these items: where they come from, what they’re made of, how they’re made, why they’re made the way they are. When these simple things fail, or when their supply comes to a stop, as happened in post-war Japan, are you able to repair or recreate these essentials? War may be too extreme and unlikely a condition to motivate your learning, but such an unwelcome motivator shouldn’t be necessary. If we ignore the things our lives rely on, then what is worth our attention? Understanding how a shirt is made isn’t just important to aspiring fashion designers, it’s important to people who wear shirts, or pants, or clothes.
We have developed a series of camps for rising college freshmen from around the country that will bridge this divide, opening minds to a breadth of content, in a way that has lasting impact. The camps immerse students in a world that takes the time to consider how seemingly simple things are made, and in doing so recognize the deep connections that exist across disciplines. The camshaft in an engine has as much relevance to the sewing student as it does the automotive student, though traditionally only one of these students would receive this lesson. These educational experiences focus on making simple things from scratch, or as close to scratch as we can get. They require a variety of skills, led by top educators from around the country who bring different perspectives and approaches, attended by students from around the country with vastly different interests, visited by guest speakers ready to share a unique perspective on the world, interspersed with site visits to acquire materials from the source and wisdom from those around us, and topped by cultural evening experiences, led by a cultural guide, to remind us of the humanities in our communities and the importance of our communal engagement. These camps are designed to make makers: an experience with life changing impact.
 Since 2015, Vector Space has been educating the public through maker education, an approach that deals not just in breadth of content, but also in experiences of deep engagement. This approach is one that sets high expectations and learns from failures, that demonstrates trust, that recognizes the importance of past experiences, of individuality, of history’s role in motivating learners, of the building of new knowledge upon old, the recognition of learning’s creeping pace, the construction of knowledge through tangible creation, the idea that knowledge should not be kept secret, and trust that students can take initiative, make decisions, and be accountable for results.
We have implemented these principles and refined our approach during the last four years, leading students in the creation of drones, capsules launched 150,000 feet into the atmosphere, projects that merged fashion with computer programming and electronics, the creation of custom bicycles and skateboards, and an autonomous boat that sailed the James River using computer vision. These are only a few among the dozens of maker education programs that we are proud to have developed and led. We have seen the impact these programs have on students: motivation toward further education, engagement in community, and a passion for knowledge. We hear it from our students and their parents, sometimes during the course of the project and sometimes years later. Most telling of all is when a handmade gift arrives on our doorstep, courtesy of a former student.
The trend toward isolation is deeply embedded in our culture and certainly not one to be blamed solely on our universities. Nevertheless, rising college students are pressured into this pattern more than anyone. They’re put into an environment that encourages specialization, surrounded by others studying the same content, taught by people focused solely on that content, seeking jobs that utilize that content. This is the time to impart a lasting reminder that there’s knowledge to be gained from every facet of life, and this knowledge has value beyond the laboratory in realms outside a single industry. But if we don’t take the time to recognize these connections, if we learn in isolation, we’ll build isolated minds and isolated lives. The things we rely on are important, they have lessons to teach us, ones that can open minds to connections, processes, and ideas never considered. To make them is to understand them, and it’s the first step in becoming someone who is of the world.
Register for our Summer 2020 Maker Camps
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