BENGALURU: WHAT brings a remote controlled pesticide sprayer, space sand and toys made from nature together? This weekend, all three products as well as their makers will be visiting the city to attend the second edition of the ‘Bengaluru Maker Faire’.
It is an event which serves as a meeting place for tinkerers and makers from different walks of life. With the support of both the state and Union government, the event, which was held last year at the Rangoli Metro Art Centre, has massively scaled up in 2017 and will be held at the Bangalore Palace as part of the Bengaluru Technology Summit. Maker faires usually have workshops by fabricators and makers who display projects created by them and explain how they were built.
Last year, the faire in Bengaluru drew around 4,500 visitors. “With the support of the government, a lot of people have been identified and invited from across the state to attend the fair,” said Anupama Gowda, curator of the faire and co-founder of Workbench Projects, a fabrication lab that operates out of the Ulsoor metro station. The agenda this year is tinkering with paper circuits, app building, simple robots and even jewellery and toy design. On display will be projects like space sand art, an abstract project which tries to project different moods of astronauts as well as nature toys, created from easily available natural materials in rural settings. The keynote address on Friday will be delivered by NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant