What Is a Makerspace?

Imagine a space that has everything you need (and some things you didn’t know you needed) to explore your ideas, your interests, your passions. 

Makerspaces are collaborative workspaces outfitted with tools and resources to support every kind of innovative endeavor — entrepreneurial, creative, scholarly, civic or all the above. That might mean a computer lab with multimedia applications and equipment. It might be a studio space where you can create large artworks. It could be a performance space. It could be a laboratory.

We provide the space and the tools (whether high-tech or no-tech), and you design, build, collaborate, and create. You actualize your ideas, from whiteboard to real world. 

It’s what you make of it. It’s all about the making.

Students setting up an art installation in the Powerhouse

Fine Arts

Arts makerspaces provide environments in which to express creative and artistic interests and talents.

Arts & Digital Arts Music
A circuit board with wires coming out of it

Physics and Electronics

Our physics and electronics makerspaces are integrated with Amherst’s extensive scientific facilities. (Some projects may require interterm training.)

Physics Electronics
People doing arts and crafts in a classroom setting

Wellbeing

The Wellbeing Makerspace, located on the first floor of Keefe Campus Center, is a space where students can explore their creativity, de-stress, and engage in a variety of wellbeing activities.

Learn More
Students making pasta in a kitchen

More Making Options

From cooking classes to DJing at Amherst’s radio station, Student Affairs offers a number of activities across campus.

Spaces, Events & More

What Are Your Ideas?

A woman holding a print of a cat among a strand of trees

Do you have ideas for what makerspaces you would like to see on campus? Tell us! See our form to get thinking, and let us know what you envision.

About the Amherst Makerspace Project

The Center for Community Engagement is working with departments across campus to develop a network of makerspaces in which students can work on projects both within and across disciplines.

The Makerspace Project was inspired by the work of the students who participated in the Makerspace Design Thinking Challenge in Spring 2018, sponsored by Academic Technology Services and supported by the Center for Community Engagement.