Most years, right before the beginning of the new academic year, I have the chance to be part of Dublin Maker. It’s a festival that celebrates the creative flair of people from all around Ireland. I’ve been attending Dublin Maker since 2015 and it never fails to delight.

The 2025 edition of Dublin Maker happened last weekend at Leopardstown Racecourse, on the south side of Dublin.

The open, participatory nature of Dublin Maker really appeals to me. As an education researcher, I’m all about the social construction of new knowledge and Dublin Maker epitomizes this phenomenon!

The venue was packed this year, as usual, and I think we’ve benefited from the rain outside. I attended Saturday (of the two-day event) and observed thousands of visitors engaged in hands-on technology, arts, craft, engineering, and science learning.

The exhibition halls buzzed as makers of all ages shared their projects, demonstrated new ideas, and connected with other creative enthusiasts. Exhibitors showcased everything from polished inventions to prototypes and works in progress.

Heaven knows my colleagues always work to the very last minute, creating new aspects of their projects (even though they’ve all been enthusiastically working for months to prepare)! I’ve provided photographic evidence of our July meeting below. ⬇️

This year was no exception as our makers worked to perfect the biomedical engineering projects they’d brought to share. Several of our group’s new lecturers and researchers worked together on this table.

I typically help with communicating the ideas to a younger audience or contributing something that’s more on the artistic or spatial side (since I’m an architect, who loves to hang out with these creative engineering types).

In the early years of Dublin Maker, 2015-2018, you would’ve seen us under the banner of RoboSlam. Our booth usually has several tables of displays with hands-on activities, grouped together under some sort of theme.

One year, we hosted the “RoboSlam Cafe” where attendees could build their own robots from low-cost kits—we wanted to provide firsthand experience in robotics. We like to demystify how everyday “smart” devices are made by showing people what’s “under the hood” and making it understandable.

Two of my personal favorites among our past exhibits have been “fractleismus” (generating images from attendees’ sketches using a fractal algorithm) and the “vaporwave fotobooth”, both presenting creations by Ted Burke. ⬇️

The fortune teller and subsequent Talking Head booth developed by Shane Ormonde, which integrated AI, were also quite intriguing. The second of these demonstrated generative AI work in real time, back in chat, GPT was just emerging. ⬇️

This year, our major theme was the “Spirit of Radio”.

My STEM Ensemble colleagues have been working hard to develop a radio that has analog feature features as well as AI enabled digital features. This is related to a project that Paula Kelly is leading to introduce senior citizens to AI and help them understand the technology.

The radios that we displayed this year were predominantly developed by David Powell, Keith Colton, Frank Duignan, Shane Ormonde, Ted Burke, Richard Hayes. Of course, many other people provided ideas and advice during our STEM Ensemble meetings.

I’ve been attending the meetings, although I can’t contribute much on this topic. Nevertheless, I go to learn and soak in the maker spirit!

Since we’re no longer just about robotics, we shifted our name from RoboSlam to “Dublin STEM Ensemble”. Our group is associated within the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Technological University Dublin. It’s also associated with the university’s tPOT research group (“tPOT” stands for “toward people oriented technology”), to which I belong.

STEM Ensemble is group of staff, students, and alumni who reflect TU Dublin’s long-standing commitment to inspiring public interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Damon Berry holds tPOT and the STEM Ensemble together—he’s a great leader!

By engaging directly with attendees, our group encouraged new perspectives and fostered a spirit of creative inquiry.

We are hoping see you at Dublin Maker next year!