Rewired an event series for Kickstarter

After the success of our gal-dem UK online tour for Kickstarter they set us a new challenge - how can we reengage with maker community after a year of lockdown?

Thinking about our work with Kickstarter, Distributed Design, Make Works and Make Manifesto we started to hatch a plan. We asked ourselves what do makers and designers want to hear in 2021? What issues are important to them? What trends have we seen emerging on the Kickstarter platform this past year that we might be able to provide insight into? That’s when Rewired emerged.

Each week throughout May we curated three one-hour sessions that dove into the ideas that are shaping a more vibrant and equitable future.

Session 1: Dreaming of the Future with Rob Hopkins, Sebastian from Lunark and Carson from Taur
Session 2: Design that gives back with Ross Atkin, Chloe Meineck and Daniel Becerra
Session 3: Wonder materials, circular waste and sustainability with Seetal Solanki and Tom Meades

We were delighted to co-host sold-out events with Heather Swift- Hunt from Kickstarter’s Design and Technology Team. With kind words and support from the maker community including Develop 3D and Restarters.

Glasgow Print Fair 2021

We couldn’t let another year in semi-lockdown pass without another Glasgow Print Fair at Home. We invited 25 artists from Europe and beyond to create a print for us on the theme of Travel. The theme of travel is something I think everyone can connect with as we slowly emerge from lockdown. Our eyes are on the horizon with the world opening up and feeling that we will soon be able to get out there and explore.

We ran for one week this year and featured work from DR.ME, Lou Rowland, Alice Dansey Wright, Tess Smith Roberts, Conor Nolan, Eleni Kalorkoti, Kieron Redmond, Linn Fritz, Thomas Hedger, Adam Higton, Sanna Hellikki Turunen, Supermundane, KMGYeah, Andreas Samulesson x Raclet, Katie Smith, Wild Press, Dominika Lipniewska, Ruan Van Vliet, Concrete Nature Studio, David Lemm, ploterre, Michael Driver, Lauren Morsley, Hollie Fuller and Risotto Studio.

Each artist explored travel in a different way from imagining time travel to daydreaming, to a summer full of sunshine as well as many other things that we’re yearning for. With the pandemic, many fairs have not been able to run. It was really important for us to do all that we could to continue to shout about print.

This year all proceeds went straight back to the artists with many of them sharing their profits with charities close to their hearts, like Glasgow-based Refuweegee. We’ve had huge support this year with features in It’s Nice That, Creative Boom, Design Week.

Big shout-out to co-organiser Jane McDevitt and her partner Peter Byrne for taking all the photography.

gal-dem x Kickstarter Partnership

Over the past year, we’ve been supporting the Kickstarter team here in the UK. This involves supporting press for Kickstarter prompts, projects and people specifically for the UK audience.

In 2019, Kickstarter started a partnership with the inimitable gal-dem magazine to support more women and non-binary creators of colour to find accessible pathways to raising funds on the Kickstarter platform. In 2020 they were due to take this project on the road to Sheffield, Bristol, Glasgow and Birmingham, everything was set and then the pandemic hit. They waited and waited in the hope we’d be able to do these events in person, but when that didn’t seem likely we started to plan to run these events online.

We decided to keep focussing on 4 regions rather than bringing together everyone in one session. The hope being that people could expand their local networks. Paved With Gold helped to secure a new batch of 12 speakers for the event series including Immy Kaur, Briana Pegado, Heather Marks and Azekel Axelle. We then worked with the gal-dem team to promote the events and create a friendly welcoming circle of creators to join in the conversations on Zoom.

Here, Kickstarter opens up some of the insights and advice from those sessions to all.

Material Explorations : Waste Streams

Throughout the year we are working with Makerversity to promote their creative programme.

September brings a closer look at creatives working with waste materials; from chipboard made out of potato to sequins made of bioplastics. 

Workshop - (k)not a ropey workshop

Join a rope making drop-in workshop to discover the pure potential of hair as a raw material. Learn about its tensile strength and the potential application of hair in the future.

Talk
A lively debate led by Material Driven to hear from four designers exhibiting in Material Explorations : Waste Streams who use Industrial by-products as the starting point in their creations and are spearheading the notion that waste is an untapped abundant resource that should be treasured not trashed.

Exhibition
This exhibition showcases designers who use waste material as a starting point and offers an alternative view to waste as untapped abundant resource to be harnessed.