FAB labs Rural propagation ‘Local communities solving local problems ‘ the mantra of the big society agenda The vision- (extract)...fablabs do not purely create inventions, they create inventors, innovators and entrepreneurs, fablabs build businesses, build communities and build economies.

1. FAB labs Rural propagation
‘Local communities solving local problems ‘ the mantra of the big society
agenda
The vision-
Three FABlabs across North Cumbria and the Penrith and the Border
constituency, augmented by a roaming FABlab - enabling ordinary people
to have access to the skills and the tools to create and make almost
anything, a digital sculpture and manufacture facility that in allowing the
creation of ‘almost anything’ with associated business support, facilitates
and sparks innovation in Eden’s businesses large and small.
That, in the use of a globally collaborative networked approach enables
access to new markets, the creation of new business, the uptake of new
jobs, the integration of creativity, science, engineering and life long
learning in the community including the young and the marginalised and
the development of a community that can together make and grow a
new kind of rural economy…
1. Strategic Fit
1.1. FABlab can form the backbone of the Eg. Dispersed
resources network, tapping in to an established working model and
adhering to the foundations charter and charitable aims, FABlab
can deliver real benefits to the communities and businesses we
work with, in keeping with our company values and vision.
1.2. An expanded FABlab and Eg. Network contributes to the
creation of a ‘full service offer’ for entrepreneurs and industry and
undertakes all of the recommended interventions to enable growth
and support the Creative Industries
(http://creativeindustries.cbi.org.uk/).
1.3. A FABlab can give its users around the world the ability to
locally conceptualize, design, develop, fabricate and test almost
anything---for example a FABlab puts communication technologies
within reach of almost anyone, anywhere. Currently Fablab partners
are working on creating mesh wireless, ad hoc networks in the

2. Lyngen Alps of Norway to allow shepherds to keep track of their
flocks from afar, and to allow fishermen to keep track of their
boats at sea.
1.4. We consider FABlabs not only the ‘killer Ap’ and the next
step towards edge of the digital revolution, we also consider
FABlab an essential component of Rural Cumbria’s broadband
connection drive.
1.5. In the context of this constituency with its high numbers of
cottage enterprise and self employment we can see the potential
uses for FABlabs as expansive; local inventiveness, coupled with the
drive for austerity will give rise to fascinating innovations and
creations. Going beyond make-do-and-mend culture, FABlabs enable
ordinary people to create almost anything. Facilitating engagement
in manufacturing on a scale that has never been seen before.
1.6. The FABlab vision is of a ‘Killer Ap’ of personal fabrication –
products for a market of one person, we don’t need this for the
products we can buy in supermarkets, we need this for what makes
you unique. The long game, the big picture is a fan out of a
community augmented network of fabrication laboratories, world
wide, responding to the needs of humanity, beyond consumption.
1.7. The short term is reduced costs for creating customised
components, a Public Relatons officers dream that harnesses the
energy of the JFDI campaign, giving local communities the tools to
solve local problems, while also understanding the big picture and
protocol regarding investment and strategic infrastructure..
2. Potential
The regeneration potential for FABlabs is immense, FABlabs can
engage people who due to social exclusion are not engaged in the
market economy, worklesness and lack of education does not impede
FABlab users, in fact ‘skills’ gained through vehicle self modifications
(pimp my ride) can be put to constructive use in a fabrication
laboratory. Moreover, fablabs do not purely create inventions,
they create inventors, innovators and entrepreneurs, fablabs
build businesses, build communities and build economies.

3. 2.1. FABlab started as the outreach arm of a 20 million dollar
MIT research program, it was not designed to start a revolution!
Each FABlab equipped by around 30ks worth of equipment
approximating and replicating in miniature the aims an exploration
of the 20m research.
2.2. Closing the digital divide, there is a fabrication and
instrumentation divide bigger than the digital divide and the way
you close it is not IT for the masses but IT development for the
masses.
2.3. FABlabs can build houses, can build widgets can build
computers, can build machines.
a)Fab labs contain; Laser cuter to do press cut assemblies 3d
from 2d.
b)Sign writer to plot in copper to work in electro magnetic
c) Micron scale numerically controlled building machine to make
precise structures,
d)Programming tools to make less than dollar 100th nano second
micro controllers, nano controlled micro controllers.
A fabrication laboratory it lets you work from micron to
microsecond on up.
2.4. FAB lab is about social impact- it’s about creating a culture
of innovators – social – economic – environmental. Its about ideas
– skills – making, about direct realisation and actualisation, enabling
new products and businesses products etc Its about stopping
talking and giving people the skills and the tools.
2.5. High access internet, ability to share innovation and
achievement, we already know that social networking in these areas
is well used and regarded as essential, the FabLab network is an
international network with vast potential to support life long
learning. There is also a soon to be relaunched FAB academy –
international, training, global lecturing video, online, part of the
developing culture of ‘just in time’ education, creating a culture of
problem solvers.

4. 2.6. FABlabs equip ordinary people to create rather than consume
technology, The ultimate invention coming from this community, is
the social engineering, in the far north of Norway the lab outgrew
the little barn it was in, it was there because they wanted to find
animals in the mountains, but outgrew it, so they built this
extraordinary ‘village’ for the lab, this is not a company, not a
university essentially a village for invention, village for the outliers
in society.
2.7. Those ‘villages of innovation’ have been growing up around
these fablabs around the world. Clusters of offshoot businesses and
micro-enterprise drawing inward investment into an area and
upskilling and employing those local to the land.
3.Economies
3.1. There is a sea change in aid from top down mega project to
bottom up, grass roots micro finance, a fresh interest in investing
in the roots. FABlab suits that mood, Each FABlab gives at least 2
days per week to free access for all, the remaining time is revenue
generating, People pay for use to FABlab per day for – IP
developing, training, corporate training, profit making enterprises,
(advantageous being tapped into the manufacturing institute).
3.2. FAB lab Manchester expects to reach their tipping point mid
to late autumn – this is a working as a business model, 15 months
self-sustaining! The positive economic and social impacts of
FABlabs are evidenced across the world.
3.3. Money wise – there is pricing flexibility in house, and
knowledge sharing is incentivised..
(Free use has a simple rule – Share – it’s free, Don’t share –you pay)
Manchesters rates are -
£2000 corporate use per day
£1000 SME
£500 per day individual
3.4. FABlab has grown into a NGO foundation to support the
scaling, and the propagation of the modal across the world, a
foundation that can ensure quality assurance and standards are

5. maintained, it is a foundation with a charter and a globally synced
list of compatible equipment and tools, ensuring that what someone
designs and fabricates in quala lumpa can be printed out by a
collaborator in new Mexico, a foundation that holds it all together
in global FAB network, reflecting back research to MIT and their
bits and atoms.
3.5. A falab is a rapid prototyping platform, and as such is
meant to encourage local entrepreneurs to take their own ideas
from the drawing board to prototypes to starting local micro
businesses, Fab Lab also teaches users critical skills in computing,
electronics, programming, and CAD/CAM fabrication techniques--a
set of internationally recognized skills.
3.6. It is additionally a platform from which a community's
technical challenges can be shared with an international roster of
engineers, who can help problem solve and design solutions for the
community. In return for the involvement of trained engineers with
the community, engineers have an opportunity to work on real life
design problems faced by large, under-served communities at the
lower end of the consumer market.
3.7. There is also room for corporate sponsorship of laboratories
and of individual machines, room for running a roaming FABlab
workshop scheme and community pilots, room for trying FABlabs as
a part of a wider strategy, and ultimately, in Cumbria there is room
or more than one!
3.8. The unscheduled self replicating activity of the FABlab
network globally is to explore the impact on personal and
community empowered fabrication, enabling consumers to become
creators, the vision is of a 1000 Fablabs across the UK, the
challenge, to see what happens when the reach a critical mass,
when everyone is within 20 minutes of a fabrication laboratory, or
when everyone has a desktop 3d scanner and printer as a
standard aspect of modern appliances.
3.9. In North Cumbria we can trial that model, give the residents
of this constituency and its boarders access to a Fabrication

6. laboratory within 1 hours of their home, to do this demands a
minimum of 3 FABlabs, scattered across the district, potentially one
near irthington associated with Carlisle Airport, One near Appleby
associated with the engineering bias of the heritage centre, one
one the west coast, energus site, accessible to outlying areas and
the marine and energy coast – the locations will be arrived at in
consultation.
3.10. This may seem greedy, but we consider in actually this
recognised the challenges and the potential of a connected and
forward thinking digital infrastructure, the campaign for rural
broadband goes so much further than ‘Facebook for Farmers’,
provision of broadband doesn’t benefit communities, application and
use benefits communities and economies. Once we’ve gone that
final mile, once we’ve connected up the landscape and the ether
with fibre, fi wi, or satellite and found fusion the effective and
engaged inclusive application of our new-found connectivity is what
will grow businesses, connect individuals and make us a very
relevant part of digital Britain.
Relationship between fab labs and EG
Although FabLabs are able to create the backbone of the Eg. network the
relationship is deeper than that, more symbiotic more integral.
EG was developed as business strategy a business model to propagate
resources for the creative industries across rural areas. Fablabs have
never been propagated across a region before and there is no one
business model associated with Fablab. In simple terms a Fablab is barn
full of kit, a shed where you can make stuff, a way of delivering the
product,the precise product that people want. Products for the market of
one.
The US senate just passed a bill establishing a preferred ration of one
FabLab per 750,000 people; we should pilot a denser propagation than
that. For Britain moving out of the recession we need a model that can
make it possible for this network to become part of the infrastructure of
Britain.
The EG business model does this. FAB lab may be the backbone but EG
defines the full organism.

7. By using the EG model to trial how a local network of resources can
support innovation and growth, by the end of the pilot we will end up
with a franchisable model which can not only be applied to any region
nationally or internationally but also a way of ensuring that the benefits
of this propagation comes back to Cumbria, the UK (and it’s
shareholders). This vision is what makes it possible for this opportunity
to create high growth in the sectors of the next generation. The
franchisable aspect of this model is what will allow this model to expand
very quickly, spreading innovation, new business opportunities, and
economic growth.
Based on the vision of the Neil Greshenbeg, who developed the Fablab
concept 'the next step will be star trek replicators, which can create this,
to that...' and if that happen Fablabs will be part of the utilities
infrastructure. If that happens we won't need high fiber optic broadband
to replace old telephony; we will need it to replace trucks transporting
objects…