Dear Cross-Maker-in-Training

Dear Cross-Maker-in-Training,

Happy orientation day! Let’s go over the program in detail:

How it works

Mindset

Learning is lifelong and can happen whenever and wherever, and anyone or anything can be your greatest teachers. With this approach, you’ll begin to see that they are indeed always around you. You’ll become more resourceful, adaptable, and independent along the way, which will come in handy because your maker journey will not always have company; the human teachers and your fellow makers will not always be there to hold your hands. There will be times when you’re out there on your own, and sometimes all you have with you are objects that you have around you.

Sometimes the teachers you may need the most may not also be within the specialized field that you're in or are after, but rather in nearby or faraway fields you never considered visiting. What can be helpful is that you make the initial effort to get out there to explore, so once you're back home it's just a matter of putting the jigsaw pieces together and seeing what picture comes out of it.

Values

To make it a safe space for everyone to learn and make, let’s keep in mind of the following:

Uncomfortable: Our program embraces friction, and we encourage you to get uncomfortable. Why? Because it’s through being frustrated that reveals other sides of our maker selves that can actually help us understand how we learn and make.

Accessible/relatable: We’ll be resourceful and work with what we have around us and make sense for us. It doesn’t matter if they're open or closed source, or have high or low learning thresholds––as long as they “get” you and support your learning and making process, you make a good team.

Playful: Creativity is also a muscle that can be trained, and we can practice that by exploring playful ways to solve problems.

Process-oriented: we’re here for the process, where our efforts and experiments may not be present in the final outcome.

Versatile: This program is your portable playground. We like to keep things open and flexible, so you can bring your own coaches and exercises with you and train wherever you go.

Strategy

Everyone has their own take on what it means to make, and we’d love to see what you bring to the table!

If you get stuck and need somewhere to start, we suggest you to try out Brandt and Eagleman’s strategies of bending, breaking, and blending (2017):

Bending: to remodel the source by altering an existing prototype (ibid., p. 58, 73).

Breaking: to take something apart and create something new out of the fragments (ibid., p.74).

Blending: to “combine two or more sources in novel ways” (ibid., 91).

Training

The key components that make up this program: an exercise, a coach, and a log. The best part: it’s DIY (or DIWO)! You can customize it in a way that best suits your pace and preference, and source and assemble its parts as you wish:

1. Choose an exercise: This can be any type of activity, at any intensity level. 

2. Choose a coach: This is an object that you already have around you or have access to.

3. Choose a goal: This can be anything you want to learn from your coach.

4. Choose a log: This is the homebase to record your obsessions, observations, frustrations, and discoveries in your training.

If you prefer to have guided starting points, you can follow along based on the program that I’m currently training with. Each day, you’ll experience being an athlete with a different sport of focus and goal:

Exercise	Coach	Training objective
(Dis)Assembling	Soldering Iron	Build/take apart/fix/break your own tools.
Drawing	Pen	Observe how you interact with an unfamiliar tool.
Folding	Paper	Modify an existing tool that’s not working for you to fit your needs.
Sculpting	Egg, Marshmallow	Find your own entry point in an activity with a high learning threshold.
Pushing	Skateboard	Find an activity that cultivates a self-motivating, stimulating, and enjoyable way to learn.
Clicking/Typing	Trackpad/keyboard	Recreate an environment that boosts your optimal performance.

This is your moment to own it, go all out, and let your freak flag fly.

See you at the first training session!

Your Cross-Maker-in-Training Buddy