Since discovering the digital fabrication phenomenon and the growing FabLab network in 2007, I became obsessed with the idea to start such lab back at home in Ukraine. After several years of research, grant applications and letters to various Ukrainian and international institutions, the opportunity appeared right under my nose - in my home town of Donetsk. New private cultural initiative IZOLYATSIA aimed at revamping an old insulation factory into a creative village type formation - thus it was only natural for FabLab to find home within such organization.
I started working on the project IZOLAB in October 2012. We decided that initial lack of high-end tools should not hold us from developing public educational program and after a series of public presentations, network building and program development, we launched our first series of workshops in February 2013.
Over the course of 16 months we conducted 50+ various events - workshops / talks / hackathons, provided training opportunities to a dozen of volunteers and interns. All that while maintaining a 0.5 semi-public status and working towards a great 1.0 opening planned for the autumn 2014.
Unfortunatelly, the escalation of political tensions in Ukraine resulted in our organization being visited by a group of machine-gun bearing men in camouflage on the 6th of June 2014.
Parametric architecture lecture from our colleagues in Kiev.
Arduino workshop resulted in spontaneous collaboration and the idea of Spaghetti Robotics workshop was born.
A visitor from Mariupol came on his birthday to build a custom yo-yo.
Local art college students learning the basics of digital graphic design and fabrication.
Poster design for the "Hello, Laser!" workshop. Playing with a famous russian internet meme, the 'hello-bear'.
IT students from DonNTU discovering the basics of physical computing with Arduino.
Our most dedicated 15-year old volunteer Danya, coming to the lab every single day after his school.
Poster for the first DIY bio event in Donetsk - gaging interest in the subject among local audience.
Heck, our visitors were even 3D printing tooling for orthodental surgery
