Zach Thompson works at a bench at MASS Collective. (Photos by Ben Austin)
The 2010s witnessed a flourishing of the collective artisan ethos in Georgia, with makerspaces hanging out shingles around the state. Modeled after late ’90s hackerspaces, envisioned as nonprofit communities of artists and fabricators — places to work with your hands alongside like-minded creators — these communal workshops and their memberships swelled, only for COVID and financial realities to set in. In a decade, makerspaces in Athens, Atlanta, Columbus and Savannah had opened and closed.
But three Atlanta-area workshops have persisted. A fourth, percolating since 2011, opened its doors in 2022. United in their focus on creation and education but carving their own niche in the metro, they may now stand as proof, per Faulkner, that the spirit of the makerspace will not merely endure but…
