Reflecting on L’in[visible] Espai Maker before Summer Pause

The summer break is almost here. 

With the Biblioteca Camp de l’Arpa closing for its usual August pause and the work pace slowing down before September’s rush, this season offers a perfect opportunity to look back at everything that has unfolded during the first phase of our make-a-thek pilot in Barcelona.

What started as a quiet room dedicated to individual study, complete with plain white walls and orderly rows of tables, has transformed into a dynamic and living space. Today, L’in[visible] Espai Maker is a “space-in-progress”, open to possibilities, filled with books about textile and craft, inspiring posters, and a large central table welcoming anyone who wants to experiment, learn, and share.

While local residents are seeing the library in a new light, curious people from across Barcelona are stepping in for the first time. L’in[visible] Espai Maker is bringing people together around that big central table, starting many conversations and fostering mutual learning across generations and backgrounds. The library has once again become a place of cultural production, creating connections through life experience, sharing ideas, and this time opening conversations around circular fashion, arts, crafts, and participatory practices.

Over the past year the make-a-thek pilot in Barcelona brought together people in simple ways:  getting to know each other during a summer merienda while sketching on a tablecloth the future vision of a circular makerspace inside a public library. That first meeting turned into a deep and collaborative planning process where the team of the library, creatives, neighbours and local associations played a role in shaping the space.

To make that happen, we organized dedicated co-design sessions with the focus of turning shared dreams into a prototype space. This reciprocal ongoing process allowed to align with the necessity and challenges identified by the library and local community. Together, with the support of Fab Lab Barcelona and OpenDot, these collective sessions helped to build a more meaningful and long-term direction for the space.

After defining together how the space will look like and which tools and machines will be offered, it was time to build modular and functional furniture customised specifically to the library’s needs, making that large central table a symbol of our collective decisions.

And what is the best way to bring all the effort to life? Right after the opening, L’in[visible] Espai Maker hosted a variety of initiatives with exceptional experts: sessions focused on repair and textile circularity, basic sewing courses, collaborative creation workshops and even an artist-in-residence program in collaboration with Territorios Productivos!
These moments offered both a chance to learn practical skills while sharing knowledge, meeting neighbors and new people, and of course bringing new energy into the daily library routine.

As we pause for August, taking time to  the main takeaway is that reflection cannot be an afterthought; it has to be built directly into the process.

Moving forward, as the space opens to public individual use with an approach to a community self-managing dynamic, our team at Fab Lab Barcelona will keep reflecting on the incredible potential of local knowledge sharing. We will continue leaving room to adapt, improve and evolve, translating the collective vision into a real, lived experience, grounded in communal care.

As we noticed during the past year an idea of a space like this thrives on the people who use it, and we look forward to coming back in September to continue growing together with this community.

And what else is happening at the other libraries? Read more about them on make-a-thek !

 Visible Mending, Facilitated by Penny Papachristodoulou (Back to Eco)

Workshops Facilitated by Fab Lab Barcelona

Marbling Technique, Facilitated by Carolin Vogler. Supported by the Training of Trainers programme from make-a-thek.

“Tramas de Memoria” project by Heloisa Casaño (Artist-in-residence – Territorios Productivos) 

“Tejiendo lo invisible: introducción a la microscopía textil” project by Ce Quimera (Artist-in-residence – Territorios Productivos)

“Lo que la lengua mueve” project by Sara Gaviria Escobar (Artist-in-residence – Territorios Productivos)