Liverpool MakeFest 2026 report

MakeFest was across three floors, each of which had plenty to offer. The ground floor of the building has previously been used as an infinity backdrop to photograph cars. This made it great for photographs, but somewhat tricky to know at any given time where the walls were! The author of this article was on this floor show-and-telling the (recently seen in this magazine) FoamO, the RP2040-powered 4-axis hot wire CNC foam cutter. Also spotted on this floor were the amazing Lego constructions from Share Our Bricks and there was even a repair room operating as a pop-up repair cafe by the lovely Wirral Repair Cafe team. DoES Liverpool had their own stall on this level and it was chock-full of amazing things.

Hidden in plain sight

It’s always fun to spot Raspberry Pi hardware being used in projects. We spotted the fantastic Museum in a Box project on the DoES Liverpool stand. This project has a box containing a Raspberry Pi; if you place an object or a card on top of the box, it gives an audio description of the item. Combined with 3D scanning and printing, this means that you can have a museum of objects that are replicas of large museum items (think statue of David) and people can handle the items as well as learn about them from the audio stories. Packing a museum experience into a small box, it really does what it says on the tin.

The middle floor is where DoES is situated and throughout the day, attendees could jump onto a repeating tour of the DoES space. A great way to introduce new people to the amazing space chock full of fantastic tools, equipment, and community knowledge. As a large and well-established UK makerspace, DoES Liverpool has a great selection of machines and tooling. CNC routers, digital embroidery, and even a snazzy UV printer sit alongside the more usual but equally fabulous 3D printers and laser cutters. Also on the second floor there was an event space. Laid out theatre style, this space had a timetable of events, talks, and demonstrations throughout the MakeFest day.

Up on high

The top floor of the Tapestry building offered a large space with lots of stands from makers and artists and more. It was a great cross-section of people and projects. There was representation of lots of communities, projects, and techniques: amateur radio, 3D scanning, pen plotting, synthesizers, live drawing, lace and bobbin crafts, CAD, CAM, game design, Godot, printmaking, and more.

We spotted a great system using a Raspberry Pi and an attached touchscreen monitor as the interface for a pen plotting machine. The interface allowed people to generate their own designs that the attached pen plotter could then plot for them, a brilliant activity from Forge and Craft. Whilst visiting that stall, we also took a look at their Brachiograph, a fun low-cost plotting device made from a Raspberry Pi Zero, three servos, hot glue, lollipop sticks, and a peg.

It was an excellent day and the new venue worked really well with a steady flow of visitors throughout the day. The tireless MakeFest team and volunteers worked hard to make sure both visitors and makers had a great day, and we did. We look forward to being back in Liverpool for the next MakeFest.