The Place Where Everybody Shares Your Tools

When her father needed a hand, he turned to her brother for help fixing an appliance or car part. It wasn’t an intentional slight — her father was progressive for the time and allowed Farkas to watch, which she credits for exposing her to trades at a young age.

But it wasn’t until adulthood that Farkas got the chance to carry her own tools.

She fell in love with furniture making after her partner, Sue, bought a sander. Farkas then wanted to share that passion with others, especially those who also didn’t work with tools growing up.

Black, Indigenous and other people of colour and members of the LGBTQ2S(IA)+ community are vastly under-represented in the skilled trades industry, with one recent study highlighting that fewer than two per cent of tradespeople in Canada identify as gay or lesbian. Another stat from Canada’s Building Trades Unions found that women make up four per cent of the country’s construction workforce.

“I started making furniture 30 years ago and never saw myself represented,” Farkas said.

For a decade, her hopes were pinned on starting a makerspace, a place where people of all backgrounds come together to share tools, learn trades and make products to sell.

The problem? Launching a hub that focuses on sharing and education is hard to pull off.

Farkas spent years contacting potential business partners across southern Vancouver Island to no avail. Last July, finally, she decided to put $400,000 she inherited from her father’s passing towards her vision and launched MakeSpace North Park .

The hub now includes a coffee shop, fabrication lab and wood shop in the heart of Victoria’s North Park neighbourhood, one of the most diverse areas of the city.

Farkas acknowledges that starting the space may have been a “cart before the horse” situation. But she couldn’t wait any longer and decided she “had to show, not tell” people that the model works, she said.

Others seem to agree. The space recently reported over 30,000 visits in its first year, with volunteers spending more than 50,000 hours to keep the site running. MakeSpace has a mix of 100 paying members — who spend anywhere from $30 to $100 to use the FabLab or WoodShop — and classes that are open to the public, no membership or previous experience required.

There are makerspaces just like MakeSpace North Park dotted around Victoria and up and down the West Coast.

The concept is growing globally , and there are generally two main ways to start one: pay cheap rent or pay commercial rent. Both come with pros and cons, said Chance McClendon, owner of By Chance Woodworking and wood shop lead at MakeSpace North Park.

McClendon also served as wood shop lead at the Victoria Makerspace . That makerspace has a favourable lease. The downside is that it runs out of an industrial park about 10 kilometres outside of downtown Victoria, making it harder to access and leading to a lower community vibe. Most of its 250 members — who pay about $50 per month to use the space — come to work on their own projects, McClendon said.