Open Source Library – literally!
The Materiom team participated in the Institute of Making Open Day by creating a pop-up workshop! Alongside the ingredients and recipe details, we displayed various bioplastic samples; clipped, pin and hung up the visitors to the open day could go through them and ask questions about the ones which they were interested in.
Meeting the public
Understanding a new topic and what its all about can be complicated, so meeting the public face to face to talk about the ideas around bioplastic making was great. Not only can we talk about sourcing natural ingredients and where to find equipment for getting started (mostly in your kitchen!), we can also find out at what people are currently corned about in regards to bioplastics and plastics in general. This kind of conversation and sharing of information helps the Materiom team within their reasearcha nd future community engagements, as well as give those asking more information and improve their familiarity with bioplastics as a new material resource.
Outdoor Workshops & air drying bioplastic samples
On top of chatting about our research and showing samples, we actually got to making some bioplastics (despite the weather!). We focused mainly on agar-based recipes where visitors had the opportunity to measure, mix, stir and even touch the air-drying samples.