The 3D Lab is in the process of unpacking and articulating the tacit knowledge implicit in the workshop and making practice we are involved in as makers and practical learning and teaching technicians working in the context of Wimbledon College of Arts’ developing immersive performance education environment.
We help students to realise their work from design to a physical outcome, either through online technical tutorials and support or working alongside them in our workshop spaces onsite. This involves, in part, teaching and facilitating making
processes, approaches to materiality and equipping students to be curious and
effective makers.
3D Lab technician, Ash Pearson, has come to call these emergent and underlying
making principles or elements of tacit knowledge: ‘making literacies.’ We hope this helps share the tacit principles underpinning the act of making. In doing so, we aim to
enable students to make and use making as a helpful thinking tool, whether at home, in the studio or the 3D Lab workshop environment.
A working definition of ‘making literacies’:
Making literacy is the ability to play, explore, understand, interpret, create,
communicate and make sense of the world using materials and processes across
digital and analogue fabrication.
Being literate in making involves, but is not limited to;
– thinking through making and prototyping
– understanding materials and their properties
– ability to investigate how things are made and work
– being able to problem solve
– transposing concepts and ideas into physical outcomes