Fayetteville

In Fayetteville, Arkansas, business and community leaders partner to create an environment that will ignite interest in the skilled trades and inspire the next generation of entrepreneurial technology leaders.

Achieving Tomorrow in Fayetteville

With a vision to be a community that encourages entrepreneurship, advances science and technology careers, contributes to the resurgence of American innovation and creates a new generation of entrepreneurs, inventors and artisans, the Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce, along with AT&T and community stakeholders, created the Fab Lab. This fabrication (Fab) laboratory (Lab) workshop operates as a makerspace providing educators, students, businesses, or others in the community open access to education, equipment, and a creative area to design and build almost anything through technology and digital fabrication. To prepare youth for the jobs of the future and to reignite the passion of making for students of all ages, the Fab Lab provides a hands-on environment for people to come together to design and build almost anything, while emphasizing the importance of experimentation, open access, collaboration, problem solving, empowerment, and creativity.

Fayetteville’s Bright Future

As a hotbed of technology startups, Fayetteville is a “funky” town where new ideas can flourish. Given their entrepreneurial and accepting culture, the Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce aimed to create a program that would increase exposure of technology and STEM for today’s students to see what their career pathways in technology could be.

Given the Fab Lab’s open access, Canon Reeves gives students the opportunity to experiment, mess up, and get inspired to join the next generation of technology and STEM leaders who will continue to grow Fayetteville’s economy.

Fayetteville is Looking Toward the Future of Trade Skills

Through equipment, tools, and technology, students are able to experiment with real manufacturing equipment and gain exposure to career pathways that they might not have learned about in a traditional setting.

The Fab Lab is an environment where students learn in a different way. They are encouraged and empowered to find a problem, design something that could solve it, and then watch that solution come to life.

Fostering Community and Innovation in Fayetteville

The Fayetteville community is welcoming new business into the city, which means new jobs and the need for new talent. The Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce is helping deliver the skills these businesses are looking for while allowing students to develop a vision for their own future career.

The Fab Lab provides a space where people in the community can come together to build and design. It’s more than the tools and the building itself. It’s a community of makers and learners coming together to change the world.

“The Fab Lab suits us because it's a university-driven effort. It's free. It's collaborative. It's open source. Nothing is proprietary, and there's no failing. You just learn, learn, and learn.”

Steve Clark, President & CEO, Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce

More Voices

Whitney Green

Director, Northwest Arkansas Fab Lab

Not only does the Fab Lab empower the students to think, ‘Wow, I can design something’ or ‘I can build something,’ but it also helps build self-confidence. When we can build self-confidence in a student, they feel like they can do anything.

Canon Reeves

Volunteer, Northwest Arkansas Fab Lab Student, University of Arkansas CEO & Founder, MORE Technologies

We don't have to use the tech that big companies give us. We can make our own tech, we can understand what's behind them. We could develop our own, and with those skills and the understanding of technology, we can solve problems in our community.

Cathy Foraker

Director of External Affairs, AT&T

Across the United States, education is readily available, but the need in Fayetteville, and in other regions, is skilled labor. There are jobs available here for 70 welders, but they don't have the workforce in place to fill these jobs.

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