Yesterday, we were at Tabletop Republic Lancaster, running an event as part of a city-centre wide Lancaster Fun Palace. We try to get involved in local STEAM outreach as often as possible!
Visitor were able to design their own playing cards, using blank cards that we’d cut out with laser beams. They ended up making some very innovative and vibrant designs!
We also had the first playtest of a eco-themed card game that Bil is designing. This will become part of a secret project later in the year! The mechanics were a little off, because we got completely bogged down in pollution really early in the game. Thankfully, real life isn’t quite that punishing. The volunteers gave very useful constructive criticism – thanks!
We have set up a crowdfunder at spacehive.com, to buy a variety wood carving equipment, which will be matched pound for pound by the Lancashire Sport and Culture fund. Our goal is to generate a total of £395, but if we can raise £200 ourselves, then it will be matched by the fund and we’ll get the new equipment paid for. The equipment will be accessible to all members of LAMM, but also the public when they are attending classes at our space.
Once we have the equipment, we will put on some courses in wood carving and whittling – any donation of at least £15 will get a place in one of these classes (they will be £5-20, pay-as-you-feel, should you want to pay later).
Set of 6 wood carving gouges (for use with a mallet for relief carving)
A brass headed carving chisel for use with the above
set of 10 wood carving knives (for whittling and spoon making)
2 “safety” wood carving knives, for use by kids or novices.
wood threading kit – essentially a large tap-and-die for making parts for vices and presses
Every donation, from a minimum of £2, is worthwhile and we are already up to £75 out of the £200 we need to raise ourselves! We do need at least 20 discrete donations, so small contributions are still very important!
We had a surge in membership, partly due to a grant from Lancaster University, allowing us to give out free or cheap memberships at different times!
Window Sign
Number of members: 35 in December (best was 59 in June)
Total subscriptions: £447.12 in December (best was £468.67 in June)
85 unique human people were actually members at some time in the year!
We got a new, electronic kiosk to allow you to buy food, drink, laser time and materials… Finally without us having to handle cash and keeping manual records
Shop takings: £237 in December
Shop sales made: 33 in December (best was 42 in May)
Shop transaction fees we paid: £4.30 in December
We got a new, easy to use, quiet diode laser, just in time for making xmas presents (thanks John!)
pew, pew, pew
Diode laser time in November: 192 minutes (3 hours 12 minutes)
Diode laser time in December: 766 minutes (12 hours, 46 minutes)
This raised a total of £192 for us!
We collaborated with a great local charity, Escape2Make, to design and create a myriad of fun items for sale at the heritage market in December
We ran over a dozen free activity stalls, all over the area
festive maps
West End Gardens, Morecambe (Creative West End): 2
We were at the Food Futures winter market today, talking to members of the public about repairing items and offering to let them make some festive decorations from some discarded maps and laser cut baubles.
Yesterday, Saturday 4th November, 2023, we were in the nearby village of Brookhouse getting involved in a repair event. We found lots of young repairers to help us and made a record of what was achieved!
We actually had more repair experts than clients, which was disappointing, but people still need to be educated about even the possibility to repair a lot of items!
You are welcome to bring broken things in to our regular open evening at our makerspace in the centre of Lancaster!
If you haven’t seen the space recently, and are curious about how many abandoned laptops are scattered around (Surprisingly, not as many as last year) take a look at https://lamm.space/about/ for updated images of the space, and the new PCs, 3D printers and equipment.
We have also been given a very kind donation of a dual extruder 3D printer. It is a bit dusty, but think of the possibilities!
Photo credit: the Lancaster Photographer/Lancaster Pride (2019)
Space2 is coming soon!! Yes, LAMM is moving to a bigger and better unit. 👍
We will shortly be getting keys to our new and improved workshop space in Harpers Mill on White Cross Industrial Estate in Lancaster. (Same business park, different building)
Space 2 will be a much larger unit, and we are very excited that it will be much more accessible too. We have spent years looking for an affordable upgrade, and we have finally found it. There is a lift in the new building so people who can’t do stairs will be able to come and join in the fun too! We will still be easily accessible on foot from the city centre and the buses stop right by White Cross business park (opposite the RLI).
So what comes next? Well, members please watch your email for details about when to move your personal projects etc. to the new unit and to volunteer for moving the communal tools and equipment. We will have some setting up to do in the new unit but the first couple of weeks in September are moving weeks!
Space2 should be open for members general usage from Oct and to the general public shortly after that. Full details on how to find us in the swanky new space will be posted as soon as we can open Space2. And, as some of you have been waiting a while, we are happy to say that we will be able to welcome new members as soon as we are in Space2. Use the contact form on the main page to get in touch
In the meantime, we will be proudly waving our banner on Sunday 22nd August as Lancaster Pride returns. Join us from 11am for the March (Sulyard Street starting point). As you can see from the photo of the 2019 event, it’s quite easy to spot out fabulous banner!
We at LAMM have been overwhelmed by the community response to our request for old laptops and tablets for school kids to use during lockdown. As most pupils will be returning to school from the 8th March we are suspending donations for the time being. We still have a stack of older laptops and tablets that need repair and refurbishment and we will continue to work on these and give them to local schools. Even if all pupils are back in school, there’s still going to be the inevitable ‘bubble closures’ and periods of self-isolation, not to mention that doing your homework in normal circumstances is much easier with a laptop!
We hope that we will take in donations again in the future to support all pupils having a suitable device at home for their school learning, but for now, please use other methods for recycling or reusing your old devices.
This is a quick update for all those who have been asking how our “donate a device” project is going. The short version is: very well and we’re very busy! But read on for the longer version…
In the three weeks since first seeing Dan’s tweet asking for 10 devices to urgently help for his school (he’s school governor for Trumacar Primary in Heysham), and our first requests for donations, we have been overwhelmed by the generosity of our local community. You are all wonderful generous people!
We have now given refurbished donated devices to 6 local primary schools, and they are all very grateful for the support of their community in helping out families in need. Here are some pictures:
Trumacar Primary getting iPads
Tablets for Castle View
Laptops for Moorside
Laptops for Dolphinholme
Laptops for Wray with Bolton
Laptops for Caton St.Paul’s
And this is an example of what our workshop looks like these days!
Laptops everywhere!
Sorting through new donations
LAMM’s project has been featured in the Lancaster Guardian here and on BBC Radio Lancashire, Heart Radio, Smooth Radio and even BBC North West! We are grateful to everyone who has passed on the message to their friends and colleagues about the project and to everyone who has emailed, messaged and contacted us about making a donation.
A couple of practical updates and FAQs too: As you can see from the photos of our workshop, we are busy working to repair and refurbish a lot of donated devices at the moment. We are a small community group and everyone one working on this project has full-time jobs and family responsibilities, and is using their spare time to do the necessary work on the donated devices.
When will you pick up my device? We have had far more requests for Covid-secure pickups than we originally expected and so we would ask everyone to be a little patient if it takes us some days to get around to collecting your device. We are only letting our members and DBS cleared volunteers collect your donations. This is a standard safeguarding measure for community volunteers visiting private houses, and we want everyone to feel safe with their donations! We currently aim to collect donations within 7 days.
If you can use the Drop Boxes in White Cross Business Park, then please do. The Gatehouse reception has security personnel there around the clock, so anytime is suitable to drop your device in our boxes in the main reception (Gatehouse) building.
Where will you pick up from? We are following lockdown regulations and can pick up up only from the Lancaster and Morecambe area. Postcode areas: LA1, LA2 (West half only), LA3, LA4, LA5, LA6 (West half only). If you live outside of these areas we suggest you use this link to find a nearest scheme to donate to: https://techforuk.com/donate-your-tech/
Is my device suitable for donation? In order of preference, we welcome the following donations: 1. Working Laptops which originally ran Windows 7 or later. 2. Tablets less than 5 years old (unpaired from your Apple ID if iPads)
Please note, we cannot unlock iPads ourselves unless we have an original proof of purchase and a signed receipt transferring ownership to LAMM. This is because only Apple can unpair a device from the original Apple ID if it is locked, and they (quite naturally) want to make sure it was legally acquired!
Finally, thank you again to everyone supporting this project. We are working hard to process all the donations from private individuals as quickly as we can, and get them to the children who need them. For any local companies wishing to make bulk donations, please visit this page: Laptops for Kids
