Fab Academy scholarships open! APPLY NOW

by Niko     Posted on November 22, 2017

Every year Fab Lab Barcelona strives to inspire new talent by offering 4 contest-based partial scholarships for the Fab Academy 2018. Got a revolutionary idea waiting to happen? This could be you.

Makers on your marks. To clinch one of our fabulous scholarships, applicants must propose a final project that links with Fab City; an initiative that aims to transform cities to become both economically and ecologically sustainable. The contest focuses on Energy, Food, Education and Community as the main sectors where Fab City is innovating radical solutions for our future cities.

It’s no secret that many who have completed the Fab Academy have gone on to develop inspiring projects that are having a real social impact. Many continue to use digital fabrication to innovate, educate and empower communities from below.

We see this with Smart Citizen. This is an IoT platform that connects citizens with their environment and their city, empowering them to participate in their communities and improve public services.

Smart Citizen is a piece of hardware that uses sensors to monitor pollution, air quality, temperature, humidity and streams this data on a shared platform. But its also a community network that encourages citizens to become more engaged in their urban environment, use data to improve public services and better quality of life.

Aquapioneers is another great example. Since doing the Fab Academy in 2016, they are developing an open-source aquaponics project for homes and offices to grow food locally.

The project is not so much about re-inventing the wheel, as aquaponics have been around for some time. It’s more about creating an easy-to-produce system that can fit in every home, apartment or restaurant. Again the project is focused on how to apply this system as a service, rather than selling a physical product.

Some other worthwhile examples are: Mamotok, Escornabot, Mykonos, Precious Plastic, Open Source Beehives.

Many of these projects were prototyped in our Fab Lab and share a common goal: to rethink how we can apply technology to improve our lives and communities for the better. More than the physical product, it is the application that interests us. This is not so much about inventing the next iPod (which you can by the way!) as much as applying technology in radical new ways, servicing the needs of citizens, communities and the environment.

So future social innovators, start brain storming. Begin your application now. The competition is open anyone interested in taking the course that has a solid background in 2D and 3D modelling, digital fabrication, electronics, web design and development.

The deadline is December 15th. For any questions feel free to email us at: admissions@fabacademy.org.

Interested in more final project examples? Browse the complete Fab Academy archive here or read up about some of last year's student examples.

We look forward to hearing from you.