Last club: Monday 15 July. We might run some one or two-off clubs in the summer. Contact to get info.
Let's dismantle some more e-waste and see what we can find.
Monday 4-5 club is now full, but we might start another one, so please get in touch if you are interested.
- Every term-time Monday 4-5pm
- age 8+ (supervised) 11+ drop/collect (or stay and help!)
- Booking essential: by email
- Big Tin Shed, Hebden, HX7 8LN
- £5 donation in advance or in hand
- Led by S Summers (QTS), enhanced DBS checked (certificate on display), fully insured
Dismantling electronic waste, we learn how things work, how to use tools, and we find treasure...
Buggy Battles will be an ongoing activity based around simple coding using the Crumble controller, designing and Making our own Buggies from recycled materials. More info here.
What is Unmaking? Some general info
'Unmaking' Like Making things, but the other way around
Why?
Around 60 Million tonnes of global e-waste is produced every year.
Obviously we aren’t expecting to solve the global e-waste problem by dismantling a few defunct computers. There are several reasons why we are so keen on Unmaking:
Increase awareness
Lecturing people about e-waste (or most things, it turns out) doesn’t seem to work that well, so it’s better to engage people with interesting activities through which we can all learn to think differently about the consumer products that are so prevalent in our lives.
Free resources
The Way of the Scavenger is to make use of the resources that you have. There seems to be quite a lot of this e-waste knocking around, and some of it constitutes very useable free resources for Makers and Tinkerers, so it makes sense to use it.
Skills
It’s not always easy. You have to quickly learn how to use the available tools. Even choosing the right screwdriver and applying the right pressure is a valuable skill, and then we move on to more advanced Scavenger skills.
Learning
Many inventors started off by taking stuff apart. Cracking open these shiny magic boxes and seeing what’s really going on inside is a perfect way to learn how things work.
Fun
Having run many Unmaking sessions we can safely say that most people just enjoy taking things apart.
Empowerment
Reset our relationship with technology. Nothing pops that consumer bubble like a hammer hitting a smart phone.
Rules:
Safety
There are many potential hazards to Unmaking- please don't take a hammer to your mum’s laptop.
Disposal
It is very important that you take e-waste that you don’t use to the WEEE section at your local tip so that the UK government can dump it on developing countries.
Genuine waste
If we break something that could have been repaired and used by someone, then we are contributing to global e-waste ourselves. There is a lot of grey area here: an old computer could potentially be fixed up, but will anyone actually want it? As designed obsolescence ensures that older machines will not run updated apps and software, it is often the case with digital technology the hardware could work for years but would still be obsolete very soon after manufacture.
