Maker Festival – brought to you by the University of Toronto
Published: August 10, 2015
Creative displays, innovative projects and interactive workshops from people like Professor David Johns ignited the imaginations of children and adults alike recently at Maker Festival, the largest maker event in Canadian history – sponsored by the University of Toronto.
“We wanted to be involved as a presenting sponsor because we think it’s a unique event in the city,” said Erin Lemon, U of T’s executive director, news and media. “It brings together entrepreneurs, tinkerers, researchers and dreamers – and it’s a chance for everyone to learn in some different ways.”
Lemon was among the more than 10,000 festival-goers who explored the Toronto Reference Library during the two-day event, which featured more than 100 maker displays and showcased everything from extreme printing and weaving to wearable drum kits, robots and more.
“The Maker Festival is all the things that U of T loves: people from all disciplines thinking through challenges, questioning received wisdom, and imagining interesting solutions to problems,” Lemon said. “And then everyone comes together to share their ideas with other curious people."
The engineers, hackers, entrepreneurs, artists, experimenters and others at U of T who love to create have long been involved in the Maker movement and helped transform last November’s two-day Mini Maker Faire into the recent festival.
(Read about visitors testing a car-bike hybrid from alumni startup Wheelspan, playing digital ‘tiny tennis’ built at U of T faculty-founded Icewire Makerspace and more.)
And U of T’s Banting & Best Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship continues to add new maker-friendly accelerators and success stories to its roster. (Interested in startups and entrepreneurship? Visit the Banting & Best Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship.)
Below, you can find some of the exciting moments captured through social media at Maker Festival, including the ‘glowatorium’ of creative LED light displays sponsored by U of T, home of such innovative lighting startups as OTI Lumionics and Nanoleaf.
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