The Goethe-Institut is the cultural institute of the Federal Republic of Germany with a global reach.
It promotes knowledge of the German language abroad and fosters international cultural cooperation. A comprehensive image of Germany is conveyed by providing information about cultural, social and political life in Germany. The cultural and educational programmes encourage intercultural dialogue and enable cultural involvement. They strengthen the development of structures in civil society and foster worldwide mobility.
In Cairo, the library at Goethe-Institut, apart from providing books and facilities for language learning, is since its renovation in 2016 a third space, a place of encounter and exchange, events and general learning. As it is well known, knowledge, especially in the fields of STEAM education can not only be acquired through books or theoretical input but needs hands on experience. This is why Goethe-Institut Cairo has decided to set up a maker-space in its library premises with a focus on digitalisation and sustainability. Here, people are offered first practical insight into new technology and can express themselves in a creative way during workshops and other events while furthermore promoting the concepts of self-driven learning, social innovation and out of the box thinking – core skills both for people who aspire a certain professional career and for persons who want to promote change and development in their community.
The maker-space at Goethe-Institut Cairo is equipped with an Ultimaker 2+ 3D printer, Cardboard, HTC Vive and Oculus Quest VR Goggles, a number of Calliope Mini single board computers, Lego WeDo and other electronics construction kits, different digital devices and lots of space for ideas and creativity in a both safe and inspiring environment. Planned are workshops on urban gardening, recycling and Virtual Reality, as well as activities on coding and 3D-printing.
Despite the fact that the Goethe-Institut is still closed for public events, the decision was made to launch the new space with a series of online talks and discussions in Arabic with leading members in the field and with support of San3a tech starting october 30th.
San3a Tech has years of experience in the field of digital fabrication, making, and technology through various activities and initiatives with more than 25K beneficiaries a year. Also, they organize Maker Faire Cairo, one of the biggest Maker Movement related event in the MENA region, apart from their services like equipping and counselling makerspaces and fablabs, providing individuals and SMEs with professional R&D services, or leading educational programs and social-based initiatives. They are, among other achievements, founders of Fab Lab Egypt which is one of the first fablabs to join the global fab lab network since 2012.
During the four events, topics with focus on different aspects of the maker-idea will be tackled:
Starting with a dive into the history of the maker-movement and maker-spaces in libraries with Omar Essafty, participants will gain a broad insight in the idea of maker-spaces in general and profit from the speaker’s experience.
The three other topics will have more specialized content:
They will on November 6th learn about different forms of sustainability with Shady Khalil, co-founder of Greenish, and Moushira ElAmrawy, who will speak about a project linking wearable technologies and traditional handcraft.
Participants will get to know the technologies and possible applications of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality on November 20th with Hisham Hosni and Mohamed Hamada, both experts on the field.
The soft launch series will end on December 4th with an online talk about the challenge of combatting misinformation in the virtual world and addresses the importance of digital literacy. Representatives of ADEF and Tactical Tech are invited.
The main language of the events will be (Egyptian) Arabic.
To assure safety of the participants and speakers, the soft opening of the maker-space will take place exclusively online, talks and discussions will be streamed on Facebook and will be available after the event on the pages of the two partners.
Stay tuned to not miss any of the events: follow Goethe-Institut Cairo and San3a Tech on Facebook!
.https://m.facebook.com/goetheinstitut.cairo/
https://m.facebook.com/san3atech/