Building up a head of STEAM: Science, Tech, Engineering, Art and Math

By Kayla Heffner for Ashland.news

Talent Maker City is making its mark in Southern Oregon with its new 8,000 square-foot facility which will be an innovative hub and makerspace for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math (STEAM), which celebrated its newly expanded space on Saturday.

But even the day before the grand reopening of the expanded headquarters for Talent Maker City at 109 Talent Ave. in downtown Talent, the atmosphere was already buzzing with activity.

The sounds of power drills, paint brushes, 3D printers and the smell of wood sawdust filled the air Friday in preparation for unveiling the newly constructed building to the public on Saturday.

Talent Maker City carries on its honored tradition of building community with their larger space.

Nina Gerona, development coordinator at Talent Maker City, gave Ashland.news a tour of the new location for the nonprofit organization in Talent. She eagerly looked forward to welcoming the community back to enjoy twice the space for workshops, classes, and projects with their community partners.

A “makerspace” is defined as a communal public workshop in which makers can work on small personal projects. Public workshops will resume again in October. 

“The space is twice as big as our previous shop. We were completely overcapacity at our last space and had tons of storage units and weren’t really able to meet the needs of our community,” Gerona said.

The new location will be able to serve more community members, students, and allow for more work with local nonprofit groups.

“This space is really going to allow us to expand and have more people in,” Gerona said. “We can’t wait to see everyone here and  we’re excited to have our community here to see the new space.”

Most of the education work TMC does are contracts through education partners with the school district or specific groups of students like the Maslow Project and BASE (Black Alliance for Social Empowerment). To reduce transportation barriers, TMC has a bus and will take projects to schools like materials for sewing or kits to make ukuleles. There will be more after-school programming available, hopefully by the end of this year or early next year.

The new facility has workshop areas for woodshop, ceramics studio, tech room, fiber arts and screen printing, and will include more programming for youth. Different areas of the space will be dedicated to multiple workshops running at the same time, while also deepening relationships with community partners.  

TMC serves the community by making things for them. Their Rise Up and Rebuild program teaches students and community members how to build beds and donate to those who lost their homes in the Almeda Fire. 

Oregon Spinal Cord Injury hosts their wheelchair maintenance workshops at TMC. TMC helps teach people how to repair and maintain wheelchairs. TMC can also 3D print parts to help support the wheelchair-using community.

It’s just as rewarding for the staff at TMC to be a safe place for everyone to be creative and make something, or to express themselves.

Sara Cervantez is an instructor and youth mentor at TMC for woodworking and screen printing. Cervantez remembers not having any type of place or programs like the ones TMC provides for kids when she was growing up. Cervantez is from White City and was happy to return to her old elementary school to teach a STEAM-based summer program.

“I got to teach in my fifth-grade classroom. That felt like a really big full circle moment to be able to be a kid from White City, but also teaching there. I didn’t think I was going to be a teacher.”

Talent Maker City allows access and provides crucial, vital after-school programs for the youth in the Rogue Valley.

Cervantez joined Talent Maker City to be a youth mentor, role model, and provide a safe place for kids and teens.

“Talent Maker City helps the kids look and be curious about things outside themselves, like 3D printing or being an engineer, realizing how therapeutic art can be for them, using their hands and their brains and that art doesn’t have to be perfect,” she said. “You don’t have to know everything when you first start something, it’s OK to just go with it, with just curiosity and an open mind.” 

Cervantez talked about how she sought out mentorship when she was younger to help guide her through different life scenarios. She also said representation and validation for affirming a kid’s identity by seeing themselves reflected in the teachers who mentor them.

“It’s important for me to be a brown woman holding space and taking up space to show the kids that it doesn’t matter if there’s no one in the room that looks like you — you belong in the room at the table,” Cervantez said. “We all have a beautiful, magical piece in us. Sometimes we don’t recognize it early right away.” But, she says, if kids can see her, then they can see themselves more, too.

Talent Maker City’s mission is to build a more connected, resilient community with creative hands-on learning through STEAM-based projects. 

As a small nonprofit, this is the biggest fundraising that Talent Maker City has ever done. The entire building project cost is $4.4 million. Talent Maker City has raised $3.1 million to date. There are still outstanding costs for permits and staff time, as well as a wish list of items for solar panels for the roof, a public art walkway, and a welding studio to expand their metal working.

Talent Maker City is still short $1.3 million of meeting its fundraising goal and hopes to continue getting support from the community.

Anyone interested in making a donation, signing up for a class, taking a tour, or getting more involved can contact Talent Maker City by email via its website at talentmakercity.org, or call 541-897-4477.

Saturday’s family friendly event featured hands-on activities, including screen printing T-shirts, painting stairs, 3D printing activities, and ceramic-making. 

Journalist Kayla Heffner lives in Ashland. Email her at kheffner1@gmail.com.

Related stories:

Expanded Talent Maker City hopes to be hub for science and tech in Southern Oregon  (Oct. 9, 2023)

Talent Maker City plans construction kickoff for new building (Oct. 3, 2023)