By DOUG MACKEY

Many in TTown are familiar with the late, great FabLab: the for-profit makerspace that famously once fashioned all sorts of objects on Market Street. (Don’t be fooled by their continued presence on the internet—that business is sadly defunct.) Others may know that residing next door to the space it once occupied is Creation Station, a nonprofit and kindred spirit. Per their website: “We have the space, equipment. expertise, resources and community to help you ‘bring your ideas to life.’ We have common tools, classroom space, 3D printers, woodworking, metalworking, sewing, CNCs, laser cutters and so much more!”

Somewhat less known, however, is FabLab’s younger sibling, FabLab Education, which has survived its old namesake and provides STEAM education (science, technology, engineering, arts and math), replete with their own cache of literally cutting-edge technological wonders. The brainchild of Anita Gray-Saito and FabLab’s George Cargill, this nonprofit educational iteration of FabLab was born of a desire to serve underrepresented youth in Tacoma.

Around 2010, Gray-Saito attended the Proctor Art Fest, where she was enchanted by an intricate, laser-cut wooden cube created at FabLab. Intrigued, she began attending classes there. Eventually, her children began teaching at FabLab as well. Soon, Gray-Saito began to wonder, “How can an educational program be beneficial?” When she and Cargill created FabLab Education in 2018, Gray-Saito and her team initially shared space with their namesake, who allowed the fledgling nonprofit to use their equipment. “We (wanted) to offer free classes to the kids because what we were noticing before is that only wealthy kids were able to take the classes. Before (FabLab Nonprofit), they were having to charge $200-$300 per camp.

Soon, however, space became sparse as FabLab began to work on a monumental project. “Building their human-sized (piloted) drone was taking up a lot of the space, and we’d end up on just a little table.” FabLab eventually morphed into Zeva, which is developing electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) vehicles. So, out of necessity, drone-building FabLab moved to a warehouse location downtown. Unfortunately, with no bathrooms, among other issues, the new space was unfit for education, so Gray-Siato and her new team moved their nonprofit to their current home at 764 South 38th Street, in the heart of Tacoma’s International District.

“We’re a nice fit with the neighborhood,” Gray-Siato says with a smile. As opposed to Creation Station or the old FabLab proper, she says, “We just do education stuff.”

To help make ends meet, FabLab Education shares its space with Jillian Fried, owner of Petal Gift Boutique in the Lincoln District, and fine artist Renee Healy, progenitor of studio/gallery Thirty8th Creates. They both help Gray-Saito with the weekly Women in Our Prime Art Club (sometimes called “Senior Moments”) on Wednesdays. The visual art group was inspired by Healy’s mother—whom she encourages to remain active—but Healy is emphatic that Gray-Saito should get the lion’s share of credit for the buzz in the building, “(This is) Anita’s doing! It was her idea because she saw a niche. No one else is doing anything like this. I’m just hanging on her coattails!” Gray-Saito counters, “My space is sort of spilling over into her space—we have so much equipment for kids to use!” Healy, it seems, doesn’t mind a bit.

Most of the classes, camps and workshops are geared toward kids. Generous funding from Tacoma Creates largely fuels the activities, which are free to youth residing within the City of Tacoma. (For those outside the city, there is a nominal charge.) “We started the year before with Tacoma Creates,” Gray-Saito says, noting that without it, FabLab Nonprofit would be operating on a comparable shoestring budget. 

The fact that Gary-Saito’s children, Elysa and Emily, were teaching at FabLab and simultaneously taking classes at UWT meant that, when Emily received her degree, she got a job the day after graduation “because of her hands-on experience. The graduates without that experience found themselves still looking for work from six months to a year out,” Gray-Saito stresses. By teaching at FabLab Education, “Instructors who are graduates of UWT can build their resumes, and youth can learn how to utilize the equipment, so it’s a positive for everyone.” Elysa Saito continues to teach laser printing for FabLab Education.

Gray-Saito says folks usually find FabLab Education “through Facebook, Instagram, and a lot of word of mouth.” Students can sign up for classes and camps at fablabeducation.org, where the plethora of subjects and activities offered by Gray-Saito and her team is evident. Programs include coding for girls, music camps, instrument-making, pin-making, African American cultural studies, electronics, anime, laser printing, and 3D printing. A row of corresponding machines line one side of the space. In one afterschool program, students use programs such as Tinkercad (a free, web-based 3D printing software) to create their own designs on their school Chromebooks. Often, the prints will be rendered in white, so the students can paint and decorate them.

Designing and printing is the perfect balance of aesthetics and technology, Gray-Saito says. “They have to go together. If you’re good at fabricating but have a crappy design, it’s going to look bad. If you have a great design but you don’t know how to use the machines, it’s going to look bad. It has to be functional but look good at the same time.”

A drawback of such new technology, Gray-Saito notes, is that “(the 3D printers) break down a lot” and a bad file can ruin print heads. “If (an element of the design) floats, it prints this big ball of spaghetti and it all adheres together. If you don’t take it off exactly right, you can pull a wire.  And then you have to replace the whole thing.” Fortunately, FabLab also offers training for adults who have purchased or are thinking of purchasing the popular and increasingly affordable 3D printers available today; those in the lab are priced anywhere from $200 (the Creality Ender-3) to $1500 (the Bambu Labs X1-Carbon). “Teachers are sometimes able to get a machine through a grant, but they don’t know how to use it. YouTube isn’t quite working for them, so they sign up for classes here to get instruction.”

Still, FabLab Education’s focus remains squarely on underrepresented youth. “The thing that’s cool, too, is we have about ten kids and three instructors per camp. It’s pretty much been the same corps of four or five teachers for so long, so they get to know the parents and connect with families. It’s really nice.” Occasionally, classes take field trips. “The Engineering Club kids (working with 3D printing) were invited to MoPOP recently to meet costume designer Ruth E. Carter,” Gray-Saito enthuses. Carter, a Black artist, had 3D-printed many of the costume pieces for the film Black Panther. “There was a big show of her work. Some of the kids had created Afrofuturism designs with 3D printers, and she provided encouragement and critiques.”

Regarding FabLab Education’s future, Gray-Saito addresses a subject that many artists are increasingly facing: artificial intelligence. “A lot of the kids just want to use AI—so, how do you use AI in an ethical way? I think you’re going to be able to do CAD (computer-assisted design) by AI pretty soon, but if (students) know the basics, they’ll come up with better designs. But we also teach them to solder and all that other stuff, so they learn how stuff actually works.”

Does she see FabLab Education growing ever bigger? Gray-Saito demurs. “We’ve talked about it—with everybody—and we like staying small.” The organization may remain small, but FabLab Education’s power and impact are mighty.