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Spark Makerspace is a makerspace in beautiful, sunny, downtown, New London, Connecticut. We are a community of makers, hackers, artists, artisans, and creative individuals. Spark was founded in 2015 by a group of artists and entrepreneurs looking to support creativity in our community. With support from CTNext, the City of New London, and some very generous individuals, we opened our first community workshop location at 86 Golden St in June 2016. Since then, we have supported our community and neighbors with an ever-growing array of tools, equipment, and workspaces for creative projects. We've organized public festivals and events, partnered with other artistic and educational organizations to further our joint goals, and hosted hundreds of classes and meetups to teach and share skills among our members and the general public. In November 2017, we relocated to the historic Manwaring Building at 225 State St, and in May 2021 we opened our office in our forever home at 7 Union St. We look forward to a long future of supporting and encouraging creativity in New London and the greater SECT area.

Mission: Supporting makers with the space, equipment, education, and community to create a spark in their creativity.

​Vision: To be a vibrant community hub for making, creativity, and collaboration in southeastern CT.

CORE VALUES

Social: Being a SOCIAL hub for support, inspiration, and empowerment for all who make and all who want to learn to make.

Positivity: We know that a POSITIVE, supportive, educational community culture is necessary for people to grow in their skill levels, whether beginner or advanced.

Access: Providing ACCESS to state-of-the-art tools in a facility that supports new learners and people who are highly experienced in their craft.

Responsibility to be diverse: We have a RESPONSIBILITY to celebrate our cultural roots and gifts to create a society within our space that embraces differences, actively includes a variety of voices, and joins together to be the example for unity in our community and beyond.

Know-how: The skilled craftspeople, artists, DIYers, students, teachers, engineers, hackers, hobbyists & activists pride themselves on their “KNOW-HOW to get it done” attitude and engage the Spark community to build new skills together.

Spark is governed by its Board of Directors, with input from its Member Council. Day-to-day operations are managed by the Executive Director. Each workstation is maintained by one or more Leads.

Read our Code of Conduct and Bylaws. And we have a to-do list that you can refer to if you want to help us fill in wiki content.

This wiki is hosted on the VM Lab.

Getting Started at Spark

• Membership
• Workstation Training/Clearance
• Read up on How Spark Works for information on Spark Makerspace's organizational structure and how to get involved in making it a more awesome place.

Getting started with MediaWiki

• MediaWiki FAQ
• Configuration settings list
• Members/Leads: Want to help fill out this wiki? See How do I get edit access on this wiki?
• Red links are pages that don't exist yet! Click on them to get them started!

Be excellent to each other!

Learn about each of our workstations

• A/V
• Electronics
  • 3D Printing
• Woodshop
• Fiber Arts
• Stained Glass
• Printmaking, Painting and Drawing
• Coworking

Meetups

Spark has a number of regular meetups.

• Fiber Arts Night (Mondays, 6-8p)
• Electronics Night (Thursdays, 6-8p)
• Drawing Night (Fridays, 7-8p)

Classes

• How to Host a Class

Resources for leads and members

• Branding materials
• IT Information

FAQ

• What is a makerspace?
• Where is Spark?
• How do I print?
• Diversity & Inclusion
• I need an account for Spark computers!
• Help! A Spark computer doesn't work or doesn't have software I need!
• How do I get edit access on this wiki?
• This wiki is missing information I need!

Problems with anything wiki-related? Ping the Electronics Leads.