DIY Faire Celebrates Innovation In Tampa

Do It Yourselfers, crafters, innovators and inventors will have their day in the spotlight March 31 at a first-ever-of-its-kind event in Tampa.

Tampa's inaugural Mini Makers Faire will be held on Saturday, March 31, at the University Area Community Complex at 14013 N. 22nd St. in Tampa from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The event features machines, robots, DIY science and technology, urban farming and sustainability, alternative energy, bicycles, unique hand-made crafts, music, food and educational workshops and installations. It's hosted by Learning is for Everyone, Inc., a nonprofit dedicated to lifelong learning through networking and resources. It among Mini Maker faires held nationwide for the past six years. 

Says Terri Willingham, Learning is for Everyone president: "We feel a Maker Faire is the perfect expression of the Curiosity Driven Life, which we seek to support and inspire through a variety of community-based projects. The opportunity to bring a small scale regional Maker Faire to the area offered an exciting and engaging addition to our growing roster of events and resources, and we're excited to bring this great festival of the creative spirit to Tampa Bay.''

"Curious people are active and adaptive learners, involved in their families and their communities, creating new things and new ways of being and doing, active and proactive thinkers.These are all things we need as we move into a rapidly changing future where the potential to evolve (or devolve) into passive, unquestioning receptors of information as opposed to active purveyors of knowledge and wisdom is significantly high," says Willingham. "Celebrating the DIY inventive spirit in an event like this is a fun and engaging way to encourage people to indulge their native curiosity, to realize that they can be makers instead of, or at least in addition to, consumers of the things others make -- that we're all capable of being creative in useful, interesting and productive ways."

Writer: Missy Kavanaugh
Source: Terri Willingham, Learning is for Everyone, Inc.