The name Fab Lab keeps popping up on social media lately. I assume it’s a fabulous laboratory. And I was right, but just a little off the mark.
Fab Lab is short for digital fabrication laboratory, a place to play, create, learn, invent, and mentor others. A place for learning and innovation.
And it blends concerns for the environment with an urge to be creative.
Fab Labs were set up to inspire people to turn their ideas into new products and prototypes by giving them access to a range of advanced digital manufacturing technology. Fab Lab provides the space, materials, technology, and expertise, and participants can take it from there.
Its roots are in the Center for Bits and Atoms, headed by Dr. Neil Gershenfeld at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Thousands of such laboratories are set up all over the world.
SoHo Galleries has teamed with Fab Lab Yucatán on Saturday for Noche Blanca. The current “Reciclarte: From Trash to Treasures” exhibit will be totally interactive.
Visitors will become magicians, transforming trash into treasures. With recycled bits of colored plastic and a toaster oven, you can create an eco-friendly keychain of your own design. Add your personal style to the object while learning about the basic steps involved in recycling residual plastic.
“You will use your imagination to create, and you will create by imagining,” said Lucy Nava of Fab Lab Yucatån. Nava is a seasoned educator with almost 30 years of experience in the field. As an English teacher and coordinator for K-12 students, she developed innovative strategies to help students fall in love with reading and writing through a curriculum that tapped into their creativity.
Luis Mayorga, a science scholar, is Fab Lab Yucatán’s manager and is in charge of technology.
Visit SoHo Galleries, Calle 60, 400A, between 43 and 41, in Mérida, starting at 8:30 p.m. Saturday. This edition of Noche Blanca includes 83 art exhibits, 53 concerts, 15 theatrical presentations, 10 dance performances, and various film, comedy, and food pop-ups. View a searchable program here.
