Fabricademy is a transdisciplinary course that focuses on the development of innovative sustainable technologies in the textile, soft materials and assistive devices industries. It’s an advanced training programme jointly established by the Academany and the Fab Foundation, who were inspired by MIT’s philosophy of offering high-level education worldwide through new global education structures. The project also strives to promote the professional career development of female students in disciplines involving digital fabrication, thus contributing to gender equality and participatory research in academics. The project is supported by Equal Opportunities for Women Commission at Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences and the 3D-Kompetenzzentrum Niederrhein at FabLab Kamp-Lintfort.
Both Fabricademy and Fab Academy follow a distributed education model that produces unique learning experiences. Each participating FabLab belongs to the global FabLab network and acts in turn as a node for the Fabricademy as a whole.
The two phase programme lasts six months, with approximately three months of seminars and learning modules and three months focused on individual, in-depth applied project research.
The Fabricademy is offered at Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences as an interdisciplinary project with a focus on the use of digital fabrication for assistive care and digital craftsmanship purposes. It can be developed into a final degree project and is conducted together with an interdisciplinary team of colleagues from different degree programmes.