Building Together, Creating Together
Imagine • Create • Share • Inspire
Imagine a place where your neighbor teaches you to weld, your teenager learns 3D printing from a local engineer, and that broken appliance gets a second life instead of heading to the landfill. That's the vision behind the Newport Community Maker Space—a community workshop where people share tools, knowledge, and the satisfaction of creating something with their own hands.
The plan is to transform an ordinary space into something extraordinary: part tool library, part workshop, part classroom, and entirely community-driven.
The approach is simple: share quality tools through a lending library, create spaces for collaborative learning, and bring people together around the satisfaction of making and fixing things.
By focusing on excellent used equipment, good tools get new life while keeping costs manageable.
The real magic happens when people learn from each other. Monthly "Fix-It Cafés" where the community repairs instead of replaces. Workshops where experienced craftspeople share decades of knowledge while learning new digital techniques from younger members.
This creates spaces for collaborative learning and brings people together around the satisfaction of making and fixing things.
The organization will be a nonprofit with affordable membership fees and sliding scale options, because good ideas and willing hands matter more than wallet size. This isn't just about having access to tools—it's about strengthening the community's self-reliance, supporting local entrepreneurs with prototyping space, and creating connections between neighbors who might never have met otherwise.
Newport has always been a place where neighbors help neighbors and hard work is valued. The Community Maker Space is simply the next chapter in that story, combining traditional Yankee ingenuity with modern possibilities.
The space needs founding members, equipment donors, volunteer instructors, and anyone who believes that when people work together, they can create something remarkable—not just projects and prototypes, but a stronger, more connected community.