by Pei-Wen Wang

Maker Fair Kicks Off in New Taipei City- Creativity and Vitality All Around!

This year, Maker Affair joined hands with the National Palace Museum, coupled with community groups from 40 schools, to launch themed exhibitions in various fields. Events with 5 major series are held from October to December. Believing in the spirit of “Makers in Every School”, New Taipei City integrates Maker culture into education, in the hope of letting people’s creativity and imagination run free.

Events co-organized with the National Palace Museum

In October, an exhibition was themed Junior Maker Along the History, featuring “time travel”. There were 3 parts- “Prehistoric Period”, “Civilization of Different Ages”, and “Future World”, showing works by students and teachers from 40 participating schools.

There is also NTC Maker Bazaar held for the first time by the National Palace Museum, museums in New Taipei City, and NTC Tool Library all together. The exhibition is based on Along the River During the Qingming Festival, a painting by the Song dynasty painter Zhang, Ze-duan, showcasing commercial activities, handicrafts, folk customs, architecture, and transportation in people’s daily life. It is hoped that the event could bring to the citizens of New Taipei City diverse and creative learning resources. In addition, there are student works at six different areas centering on food, clothing, accommodation, transportation, education, and recreation.

Let’s not forget the project- Along the River During the NTC Maker Contest, where student groups took part in parades and games, designed based on interdisciplinary courses, to learn more about Maker culture. The contest was held at the National Palace Museum on Saturday, November 7, with 39 teams of teachers and students from schools of all levels in New Taipei City as contestants. Participants worked their imagination by using interdisciplinary themes as well as local culture and features of each school to recreate the festive spirit and worldly commotion of people’s life and the landscape of the capital in the painting.

The Along the River During the NTC Maker Contest was exciting, where the participants were divided into 2 tracks for unicycles by the primary schools and animal-towed carts by the middle schools. The transportation tools should be based on the ones in the painting, coupled with features of each school. Contestants should also integrate a bit mechanism into their work to make the animal’s feet move like they were real.

Over the past six months, every team had been collecting resources, brainstorming, and making the best of their skills to come up with tools for transportation that bring out the specialty of each school.

Additionally, to spread the Maker culture, New Taipei City Government is holding a Family Maker Day from October 31 to December 19. The event features parent-child Maker programs designed by 28 schools with Maker courses with Halloween and Christmas as the themes. During the Maker Fair, MakerMobile will visit rural communities to introduce cultural relics from the National Palace Museum and learning resources related to Maker courses, where teachers and students in rural areas can have hands-on experience of being Makers.

Conclusion

The New Taipei City Maker Fair works together with the National Palace Museum this year to organize various activities for more people to learn the charm and fun of self-making.