Toronto’s largest maker event will expand to a week-long summer festival, making it the largest maker event in Canada.
After three years of growing attendance, the Toronto Mini Maker Faire is relaunching this year as Maker Festival, a flagship week-long festival to celebrate Toronto’s burgeoning maker movement. The event attracts city’s technologists, educators, entrepreneurs, urbanists, artists and engineers seeking to unveil their latest creations and inspire curious onlookers. Last year’s event attracted more than 10,000 people to the Toronto Reference Library for two days of exhibits, speakers, workshops and installations, making it the largest Maker event in Canada.
Over 100 makers exhibited their projects last year, including large-scale kinetic origami art, a 3D-printed laser tag gaming experience, a tweeting typewriter and over one thousand beginners soldering their very first electronic circuits. “This year, we’re expanding to include a week long lead up of interactive events at makerspaces and creative studios throughout Toronto,” explains Jen Dodd, Executive Director of Maker Festival. “We’re lifting the lid on the groundswell of creative tech going on just under the surface of the city and inviting the broader community to participate.” “Fundamentally, the maker movement is about the link between thinking, making and innovation literacy… It’s about developing interdisciplinary skills and fostering experiential learning while fulfilling needs in the economy and society, some that might not exist yet,” says Robert Luke, Vice-President of Research & Innovation at George Brown College. “We’re excited to sponsor the Festival this year as it reinforces all of these vital needs with an accessible, hands-on approach.”
The Maker Festival is hosted by the Toronto Reference Library over the long weekend August 1-2nd, with a week-long lead up of interactive events starting July 24th. The event invites makers, vendors, exhibitors, speakers and partners to check out the call for submissions at www.makerfestival.ca
About Maker Festival Maker Festival is a celebration and cultivation of the city’s vibrant technology and maker community. We unlock the inner maker in everyone by nudging participants toward experimenting, hacking, building and playing with the physical and digital worlds.
“The event aims to bring together Toronto’s most creative people and projects, in order to inspire openness to possibilities, a sense of active participation in shaping our world and a yearning for a more wonder-filled tomorrow,” says Ceda Verbakel, creative director Maker Festival.
