“What if we find a sponsor to give us a 3d printer 🫣”
Harrie, Sunday, 5.14pm“Sure, I’ll send some emails”
Steve, Monday, 10.21am
That is the entire conversation that started this. Like most good things here it began with Harrie having an idea, and with the fact that asking for things is terrifying but she asked anyway. My reply carried the full weight of my strategic planning.
So we sent a slightly cheeky email to a company in Chorley. It said, more or less: you get 3D printers to people who would never normally use one. We do the same thing, just with art. It felt like we should probably talk.
Chris from the CREATE Education Project wrote back the next morning. And instead of a polite no, or a brochure, or a discount code, he offered us a printer.
Not just any printer. Chris thought about who would actually be using it: complete beginners, kids, artists who have never touched one, people who wandered in off the street because the building looked interesting. So he picked a machine to match, a Bambu Lab A1 Mini Combo, an open frame printer that runs on safe, cheap, friendly materials, and he is sending it from their own demo fleet. A company that thinks about accessibility before we even ask is our kind of company.
It arrives in the coming weeks, and it will live inside Studio BRUT, where we plan to put it to work in our free workshops. If you have ever imagined an object and wanted to hold it, that is what this machine is for, and nobody will ask to see your qualifications first. The rule here is the same for printers as it is for paint: nobody needs permission to be an artist.
So: thank you, CREATE Education Project. They are a small, close knit team in Lancashire who have spent years putting this technology into schools and community spaces, training the teachers who teach it through their Certified 3D Educator Programme, and winning a BETT Award along the way. Community and access are two of the pillars they build everything on, which might be why a cheeky email from an outsider art gallery got a yes instead of a form letter. In their own words: CREATE Education provide 3D and STEAM technologies for education, research, and makerspaces. Run by teachers, for teachers. And now, alongside the schools and the makerspaces, a gallery in Swindon. You can find them at createeducation.com, and their logo now sits in the partner strip at the bottom of every page of this site, where it belongs.
When the printer lands we will post its first print, whatever it turns out to be. If you would like to see the place for yourself, the gallery opens Saturday 15 August, 6.30 to 9.30pm, free entry, and CREATE will get a proper thank you out loud on the night. Free tickets are at studiobrut.art/rsvp.