Richmondmakerlabs.uk:About

About

We are a special interest group of the Ham United Group. This enables us to leverage their existing CIC structure, gives us the visibility in the local community, and get on with making.

We are a group of individuals some members of the Ham United Group some just members of the Richmond Makerlabs community.

Since this is a community project it makes sense to encourage and use "Free as in Freedom" software and open hardware. We aim to document all our projects so that others can benefit from our projects.

We are also a group of people that care about the environment so we would like to repair things to reduce WEEE waste and provide value.

Following the 4 R principle:

1. Reduce waste. If you cannot do that,
2. Repair it. If not,
3. Reuse the stuff in a different way, if that fails then, and only then,
4. Recycle the item.

Slideshow Presentation

Hackspace Definition

Following on Hackspace UKrequirements:

• Richmond MakerLabs is a part of the Ham united Group CIC which is member managed.
• Ham United Group is a CIC not for profit. See Housekeeping details here.
• Richmond MakerLabs and Ham United Group is based in Little House, Ham Close, Richmond Upon Thames TW10 7NY, UK.
• Richmond MakerLabs provides access to equipment and facilities for people to socially and technically can interact.
• Richmond MakerLabs bank account details is handled by the Treasurer of the Ham United Group (HUG).
• Richmond MakerLabs has at current date (2018-10-08) more than 150 members. Keys is not provided to all members but there is a set of contacts "key holders" that can be accessed for entry.
• Richmond MakerLabs does not have directors as such, but depend on the directors of the Ham United Group. See current board.
• Voting is conducted as seen by CIC articles of association informally. Members are informally required to be 18 or over or to have an over 18 responsible adult represent their views.
• Currently (2023-10-09) Richmond MakerLabs is open every Tuesday and Thursday evening, more up to date information here.
• Richmond MakerLabs describes it self as a community workshop, an arts and craft workshop for the modern world, makerspace or hackspace.
• Richmond MakerLabs supports STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Maths) with the mission of improving the community.

History

Paul Gibson wanted to have a Hackerspace nearer to Kingston Upon Thames so he created a meetup page to try to catch other people interested. This prompted the creation of the KingsofHack group.

Andrés Muniz was a member of the Ham United Group (HUG). He had seen that some fairly big projects had come out of this Community Interest Company and wanted to help out with something. He submitted a project proposal called DIY Computers (later re-branded to Computers and DIY). The approach was to help people with their computers but using a DIY approach and only using and recommending Free as in Freedom Software. This was done in Little House.

On 22nd July 2013 was first Pub Meet. 20th August 2013 was first Meet at Little House.

Paul and Andres met each other in the first meeting of the Kings Of Hack group. There Andres said that he had some space to do some hacking just as long as this was to help the community: offering technical help and doing community based projects.

The Ham United Group directors considered this a great idea and little house soon became busy. The name of the group changed to Kingston Makerlabs to follow the trend that we made things not only hacked things. Also with an emphasis on the "s" in labs to leave it open for a network with schools.

The group grew to a significant size within the Meetup web page but Paul Gibson soon had some server space that he could manage where we got a mailing group and this wiki. This meant Paul could stop paying the fees and Andres was a little more relaxed about the fact that we where using non-free as in freedom software.

The group then decided (after much debate) to change the name to Richmond Makerlabs since Ham is in Richmond Council. (Ham MakerLabs sounded like a butchery and there was already one in Ham Parade).

Paul Gibson sadly moved away from Kingston but still has a lot of ties to the group and has promised to come by. He is still an administrator for the wiki, mailing list and server. He no longer owns the domain name: richmond.ml but it still points to our web pages.

Thanks to Dan for registering the domain richmondmakerlabs.uk