help us buy a glowforge laser
Apiary Haus will be a social space for adults and children who can book a session and learn about digital tools and fabrication in the heart of the National Forest.
We want to bring a social space to the heart of the national forest. We need a laser cutter to get us started in phase one.
Apiary Haus will work in three phases and the planned roll out time for all these phases is one year with a new phase started every quarter.
THE PHASES PLANNED
phase one
we need to raise some funds to purchase/lease our very first laser cutter and engraver. we are cutting looking at leasing.
phase two
we will purchase a temporary mobile space to work and train both adults and children on a calendar schedule.
phase three
full time open space for co-working, coffee, training and laser cutting and etching services. open to the public.
apiary wants to differ from usual service provision by using social media to tell the story from idea to design to fabrication and use this to tell weekly updates of the products that have been made but also how much of any profits are going back into the project.
We will put money back into the project and donate to our own project to keep money into apiary haus.
Your donations can help us make this happen!
I'm a father of one (i'm 42 and my daughter is 8) and i'm currently in a temporary job after being in recovery from depression and losing everything five years ago. I'm building up everything from scratch and have moved back into my home town of Burton On Trent to be closer to my daughter.
The Laser in phase one will cater for the needs of local and european orders and help fund phase two which is to build a social space for kids and adults to learn together the art of laser cutting and 3d printing in a shared environment.
Having dealt with a mental health situation i've found that doing something i love with passion with my amazing daughter helps my mental state massively. I want to create and make real value without compromise.
Since christmas of 2014 i have been working in a warehouse doing twelve hours shifts just to keep my head above water and allow me some weekend time with my daughter. In that time i have worked on the idea and website and finally six months later here we are!
Building the Apiary Haus will not only bring together all the things i love to do with passion (laser cutting and engraving, making, teaching) but it will allow us to build a social space to teach your kids at the same time. My daughter is really excited about becoming a mini brand advocate for teaching the software! :)
We expect to have our laser in the next month and move very quickly to raise funds in phase two to fund the building to make, sell and educate adults and kids about online digital tools and local fabrication.
having 'had a go' in the summer of 2014 at a local maker space with my daughter i knew this could be something we could both do together.
fast forward a year later and services like 3dhubs are available that are connecting potential clients with local equipment so you can design at home and pick up local.
local, sustainable production cutting down transit costs and building local helps build social community maker spaces.
It's a fresh, new and fast moving new industry around hyper local small scale making of concepts that can potentially be delivered to clients remotely with clients from across europe and the world.
WHAT WE HAVE SO FAR
In the first months of the first half of 2015 we have made a website, spoken at length about our idea to a series of land owners and waited until the may bushcraft 2015 hosted at the beehive.farm to soft launch.
we have a basic making space which we have on a bartering exchange and this creates a huge break for us. not having initial massive outlay means we can focus on products, sustaining ourselves and getting the most from the laser.
next we stumbled across opendesk who give away open sourced designs of furniture (how amazing is that) just think, if we can raise enough for a big enough laser cutter we could print custom desks and chairs!
your money in phase one would help us either purchase a basic model or fund for the next eighteen months a large format laser cutter and engraver allowing us to work twelve hour days, four days a week to build up our client base to provide you with a social space to train others.
THE APIARY HAUS.
The name Apiary Haus came out of the idea of worker beers in different hives. I guess you could call them 'hives of activity' we wanted to create a space in conjunction with the Beehive Farm which touched on their values for sustainability and stitch them with our digital vision of future working, open badges and learning and training for the adults of the children staying at the camping site.
FROM CONSUMPTION TO CREATING
My daughter loves technology. Just like me she has grown up in a world full of it. Some useful, some time consuming and some pointless.
If we want to get our kids to understand the outside world we live in and understand the value of materials, enviroment, transportation costs and other factors we need them off the small screen and aware of the outside world big picture.
Having seen first hand the creative lightbulb go off when my daughter saw her design (on a computer of course) that she made come out on a laser printer i could see that she started to connect the dots of how things work.
I believe that local, sustainable fabrication can teach our children to make and create and not just be zombie next generation consumers that are tied to technology to just pay to engage but themselves can be the next generation of designers and creators.
YOU CAN HELP
If you can help with a donation that is amazing but if you cannot then you might be able to help in other ways. using your social networks to 'amplify' our fundraiser would help massively so please share to your groups on facebook or wherever you can where you know a lot of people.
If everyone gave a small donation from a big local group on facebook we would make our total easily.
We have decided not to use 'time-limited' sites like indiegogo or kickstarter because we currently do not have the capacity to push the fundraiser everyday and we want to grow this organically.
We will release a series of videos via youtube informing people about the usages of the laser cutter and the vision for the apiary haus here in the heart of the national forest.
Thank you for your time,
Phil Campbell
@philcampbell (twitter)
/thegravity (facebook)
P.S -- feel free to ask questions, we will add all the questions and responses at the bottom of this page. We will also give you updates as we go.
P.P.S -- our campaign has no time limit set, if you need flyers for your school or company email me to get those dropped in (i've got 5k of them!) or download the pdfs and print them! :)
