“I kind of want to make a Pikachu,” he said. So he did.

Donna Litt
Makers & Shakers
Published in
4 min readNov 30, 2016

STEAM is the What; Maker Culture is the How; Innovation is the Why. That thought has kept me company ever since Brent Wettlaufer first shared it with me a couple weeks ago.

Brent, a photographer-physicist-philanthropist and local Kitchener-Waterloo maker, loves the process of learning. Like Eva Bodahelyi, current president of Diyode, Brent revels in tracing those threads of curiosity that begin with questions like, What’s that? to, What’s it used for? and How does it work? all the way to the grande finale, Who uses it? So it makes sense that Brent was a top student. Until he reached university, that is, when he began to struggle. Hard.

The way he describes it, he’d learned all the hard skills that were required to get good grades, but he was lacking in certain soft skills; tools that would have helped him stay motivated and push past obstacles (of which there are many when studying physics at the University of Waterloo). Skills like Leadership and Communication and Conflict resolution that build self-confidence and help students stay motivated in the face of adversity weren’t required prior to university.

Without those skills, without the self-confidence to take learning to the next level, Brent fell out of love with it. He lost his passionate love of learning and stopped nurturing his own curiosity.

It was a devastating realization. So Brent began to augment his education through other means. He forced himself to level up. He followed his passion for photography as it carried him to new places to meet new people, and discovered maker culture in the process.

Through maker culture, Brent re-discovered his intense love of learning. He recognized the feeling immediately. It was the same feeling of love that overtook him when he was a young boy, escaping pig farming duties (note: Brent was raised on a pig farm—

Guinea Pig Pineapple Debate Team on Pexels

no, not that kind of pig

Debate Team Lead, also on Pexels

that kind of pig )— to hang out with his good buddies Commodore 64, Nintendo, and his grandmother’s SLR camera, because tinkering with them fed his curiosity.

When Brent’s curiosity wasn’t nurtured in school he stopped practising self-discovery. He stopped challenging himself in a specific way at a young age, and so he never had the opportunity to develop a number of critical skills.

And now?

Brent is taking over leadership of MakerClub at The Museum because it’s a place where a child’s curiosity is deliberately fed, and a child’s love of learning is nurtured.

How awesome is that?!?!

When children are caught up in self-discovery they often ask, “What do I do next?” And Brent wants to make sure there’s someone there to respond with, “What do you think you should do?”

Self-discovery provides freedom for the expression of self. Makerspaces provide an environment for children to discover, to learn by doing, and more importantly: to learn by doing while knowing that they’re going to fail along the way — a distinct difference that Brent’s quick to point out. Because when children understand that failure is a natural and expected part of the learning process, they begin to develop the soft skills — leadership, communication, conflict resolution — required to live a confident and fulfilling life.

http://www.makerclub.ca/

Brent’s face is a kaleidoscope of expressions. And it comes alive in the most delightful and colourful of ways when he’s speaking. But no expression is so brilliant as when he’s speaking about his interest and fascination with learning.

To him, Makerspaces are places where thinkers and doers come together and become one and the same. It’s not enough to learn only the hard skills of soldering, or circuitry, or wood working; and it’s not enough to tell a story, take a photograph, or write a song, without a message. But when these two spheres come together, humans come up with the most thoughtful and impactful of ideas (just take look at what Simon Clark’s doing with his Precious Plastics project).

Photo credit: MakerClub

When I asked Brent what types of projects the kids work on, he explained that they generally start with something simple.

“Something like a 3D printed keychain is a good first project. It’s simple. A child can customize it, make it unique, and it’s mostly a 2D design with some bumps and ridges. It’s a great way to experience why things look a certain way and how things look on different planes, and by doing that they learn how to make more complicated things.”

“Like what?” I asked, curious to find out what sorts of “complicated things” a child might want to 3D print.

“Oh you know. Lightsabers.”

I laughed. Space weaponry. Of course.

“It’s not all lightsabers,” he quickly explained. “There was this one kid who told me, I kind of want to make a Pikachu, so he did.”

So he did.

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