Make Nashville provides space and tools for locals to bring their ideas to life
Need to repair something electrical? Want to make a bowl or a piece of furniture? Or maybe sound mixing is more your speed?
There's a nonprofit for that.
Make Nashville's objective, as its name implies, is to enable makers to make. At the creative space, 620 B Davidson St., ideas can be brought to life through a variety of different materials, from clay to plastic, metal to wood or textiles to audio.
According to Make Nashville Board Member Steve Roche, the organization was founded because people were searching for a place where they could share big tools and maintenance equipment. Word of the new space spread rapidly.
Initially based in East Nashville, Make Nashville recently moved to a new home near the Cumberland River."In a makerspace, you've got to share office spaces," Roche said. "Everybody knows what those are — same WiFi and same coffee pot and same printer and all that. Well, this is the same thing, except for big tools.
"Nobody has this in their house. It's a place for people like me, who like to do things with their hands and see something tangible come out of ideas. I love to get together with people, then write down and make stuff. And so that's what we did. We got 3D printing and visual arts, which is drawing and oil painting, an electronics shop, and a little recording studio."
In the "big room," Make Nashville has a setup for an auto shop, woodshop, metal shop, ceramics and a sizable computer-controlled CNC machine, which is used in manufacturing. Interested people can join as members to have access to the aforementioned tools and more.
The membership tiers are priced to form a community of makers from all backgrounds. Single-person standard memberships cost $75 per month. Student, senior and military discounts bring the membership cost down to $50. Child memberships are $25, and family membership pricing, for up to two adults and one child, is $35.
Supporter memberships, for those who want to aid Make Nashville's mission but won't typically use the space more than three times per month on average, are available as well.A bigger driver for those joining is that many people moving to Nashville have limited space in their homes to hold larger equipment.
"The people here are phenomenal," Roche said. "They are some of the smartest, most capable and talented people you'll ever run across, from all walks of life, from all different aspects and with different points of view that we might not agree on outside of here, but, here, everybody can make. Make Nashville is just so vital."
Roche has been a longtime supporter of Nashville Design Week, the weeklong celebration of Music City's design scene. During this year's event last month, Make Nashville collaborated with multidisciplinary design, build and fabrication team Aberdeen Studio to host a workshop called "Contributing to the Bigger Picture: A Hands-On Art Roulette with a Focus on Community and Collaboration."
"We wanted to see if we could do an event where people can actually come in and make something and take it home with their own hands," said Roche.
Workshop attendees had the option to choose between painting with Aberdeen and Maggie Sanger or crafting ceramic masks with Make Nashville and Judith Kenigson in a group setting. The exercises were done in “roulette” style, meaning each person focused on a piece for a dedicated amount of time before passing it to another person to work on. The artwork was considered complete once everyone had added a contribution.
The group also discussed theoretical issues in a panel-style conversation.
"Now, let's take these thought patterns, these nebulous ideas in our heads, and turn it into something tangible," said Roche. "This really gets to me. This is the heart of what all humans do — which is this is one thing that makes us human that we tend to forget in our modern society — that we're so good at making stuff."
Roche said he believes if you can think it, most of the time, you can bring it into reality.
"That's why people come here," he said. "Most people have some specific thing they want to get done, and that's what they do. Then there are a few that say, 'Oh, man. I just love to be around tools.' Those are the ones that get the whole bigger picture."
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Test your creativity at nonprofit makerspace Make Nashville
