People involved
Years active
Hack.rva is Virginia’s first member-run non-profit makerspace filled with tools, computers, and people who like to build, invent, tinker, expand their minds, and learn and share new skills.
Creative workspaces known as hackerspaces have been developing all over the world for years. These spaces offer their members and local communities access to unique classes, workshops, tools, and talents with the goal of promoting technical-creative projects of almost any kind. Most hackerspaces have a strong and loyal membership base, holding regular meetings and classes in varied topics. These hackerspaces have developed around very creative and talented people who routinely work on projects for the sake of being inventive and intellectually stimulated. Some members join hackerspaces to learn skills they do not know and many join to talk about projects they are working on.
Hackerspaces also have unique methods of education and choices of topics. While established academia focuses heavily on creating a sound base of knowledge in related topics such as engineering and computer science, the barrier to entry into universities is incredibly high considering cost alone. Hackerspaces choose topics within their portfolio of technology and understanding because it is typically members who teach the classes. These classes are typically available at cost to members and incredibly low prices to anybody in the community.
HackRVA was created to bring together a community of technical-creative endavorists and provide an environment that encourages building and learning. You’ll find a diverse group of individuals who are into electronics, robots, woodworking, embedded software, metalworking, music, art, video, photography, 3D printing, sewing, textiles, and virtual reality—and that’s for starters.
The concept of a hackerspace was created in the 1990s in Germany with the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) and C-base being the first hackerspace to embrace the concept. Hackerspaces grew very slowly at first with only several workspaces opening in Germany. It wasn’t until 2007 when the website hackerspaces.org and others in the US started to push the concept further. In 2009, Luke Libraro and myself started to discuss how we could bring this concept to Virginia. Richmond,VA in 2009 had limited workspaces to build and create - most of which were limited to purely artistic and design pursuits (art studios and whatnot). There was not an open community in Richmond that allowed engineers, technology enthusiasts and creative endeavorists a mutual place to build and learn. That is why we started hackRVA and at first it was only a small group of people meeting in my small apartment. Together we crafted the initial guidelines on what hackrva would become.
It only took several months for the hackRVA group to realize that the community needed leadership, formality and space if we wanted to grow. It wasn’t until 2010 that Luke and I formalized the company as a for-profit LLC initially, to quickly acquire the space needed to allow hackRVA to prosper. 211 West. 7th Street was the first official location and allowed us a significant amount of space to have dedicated workspace, member storage and enough room to begin teach classes on soldering, microcontrollers, and general electrical and computer engineering.
Our time at 211 W. 7th Street was sweet but short-lived. HackRVA called 7th street home for several years, but due to shifts in ownership of the property, we needed to find new space. Luke and I went out to find a new, albeit bizarre, temporary location for the community. Luckily, at this point, the membership had grown to over 50 folks so moving the entire workshop took approximately 2 days to get fully moved into 1906-E N. Hamilton - a corporate office with lenient owners. We were “allowed” to run heavy machinery including table saws, laser cutters, CNC machines and more from this location and spent approximately a year making it work. However, the space became a tight-fit very quickly and we needed to expand.
Our final move was to our current residence at 1600 Roseneath Road - a giant industrial space (technically an industrial freezer). While being lined with galvanized steel might be bizarre to some, it came with the added benefit of not needing to wear our aluminum hats anymore! This space has proven to be an excellent home for the 150+ members and hackRVA continues to grow into adjacent industrial spaces. What was once a for-profit LLC has grown into an official 501(c)(3) and is now run by the members and appointed leadership.
HackRVA is a makerspace/hackerspace with membership that has grown to over 150 members and has established itself as one of the top locations for creative making in the city of Richmond, VA for almost 10 years.
HackRVA is a collaborative workspace filled with tools, computers, and people interested in knowledge and hands-on experience. Member dues keep the space running and members volunteer to run the space and manage the organization. No-one owns the space, and everyone contributes in whatever way they can to help it flourish. If you’re interested in a hobby or subject of knowledge that is “makery” related you’ll likely find not only a space to work on your projects, but comradery as well.
HackRVA members have access to the makerspace, tools, community and learning opportunities through member-lead workshops, events and projects. Check out our workshops on Meetup.com and stay connected through social media.
HackRVA Labs, Inc., a is non-for-profit corporation managed by a board of directors and organized exclusively for educational and scientific purposes as defined by section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
