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Maker stories, practical guides, and what's happening in UK making.
The UK government's advanced manufacturing page was updated on 15 July with figures that mostly sound very large: £500 million of collaborative research and development funding, £4 billion for zero-emission vehicle manufacturing through DRIVE35, and £116 million for Made Smarter support aimed at 5,500 small and medium-sized enterprises.
Something important changed for adult learners in England on 1 August. The government expanded its Free Courses for Jobs offer to include more Level 2 engineering and manufacturing qualifications. The official announcement lists 49 reformed engineering qualifications and 23 reformed manufacturing technologies qualifications.
A Bristol tool-sharing story is a useful reminder that practical jobs often fail at the first hurdle: people know what they want repaired or made, but not what tools, skills or route will get them there.
A South West repair story shows why making and repair belong together: when something specific breaks, the hard part is often finding the person with the right practical skill.
Some repairs are so large that they stop looking like repairs and start looking like full-scale making projects. Bristol Beacon's restored organ is a useful reminder that restoration is making with history, constraints and responsibility added.
A current repair-focused fabrication paper and recent reporting on repair cafes point to the same practical shift: fixing things is not just waste reduction. It is diagnosis, design, parts sourcing, fabrication and testing.
Stories from the people who make things, practical guides for getting a project made, and what's happening in UK making.
A new Aardman exhibition at M Shed puts Bristol craft, model-making and physical storytelling in the spotlight. For Need It Made, the useful lesson is simple: ideas become valuable when someone can actually make them real.
What the loss of a Bristol institution tells us about specialist skills, local manufacturing, and why finding the right maker matters.