MyMachine South Africa is leaning on the shoulders of a powerful collaboration of The Initiative Of Community Advancement (founded by Jeremy Maarman) and Open Design Afrika (founded by Suné Stassen). We’re proud to share that Suné is featured at ICAS, the International Conference on the Advancement of STEAM education (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics). Suné...
Open Design Afrika’s CEO, Suné Stassen was featured as a keynote at Interaction Week 2022, hosted by IxDA (Interaction Design Association) in March this year. The theme of this event was “Design in Perilous Times. One year on. What have we learned?” Her powerful talk is a 1-hour documentary titled: “A Super Power to build a thriving future for...
World Tourism Day, celebrated each year on 27 September, is the global observance day fostering awareness of tourism’s social, cultural, political and economic value and the contribution that the sector can make towards reaching the Sustainable Development Goals. We thought to dive into our World-Map of Dream Machine Ideas that resonate with this theme. And we have...
Creativity going global! In January we launched our MyMachine DreamsDrop Campaign 2021 to Primary School Teachers around the globe. Students from 21 countries (Morocco, South Africa, Kenya, Mozambique, India, Vietnam, Turkey, Armenia, Australia, New Zealand, Cyprus, The Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy, Poland, Canada, Usa, Mexico, Ecuador, Bolivia) uploaded their dream machine! We picked 39 ideas (from all continents) and connected these to university students at the School of Industrial Product Design at Howest University...
In South Africa children from different primary schools have invented their dream machines. These have been elaborated within the MyMachine South Africa context. The fabulous results were first shown in October at the iconic V&A Waterfront in Cape Town within the framework of the Open Design Afrika festival 2020. And now, the exhibition has moved...
We are extremely proud to invite you to the MyMachine South Africa exhibition on October 31st. The exhibition will showcase the dream machines invented by primary school children in South Africa and elaborated in the framework of MyMachine South Africa. The exhibition is a part of the Open Design Afrika festival that takes place October...
As the MyMachine South Africa 2019-2020 Exhibition is getting closer, the production of working prototypes is going strong. We can’t wait to see the results. Please join us in Piketberg on Tuesday 24 March for the MyMachine South Africa 2019-2020 Exhibition.
Taking classes outside! Happy faces in ‘Grade 4’ (Fourth Grade) classroom of teacher Anrie in Komatipoort Academy! On behalf of MyMachine South Africa, 2 professors at Howest University of Applied Sciences (Belgium), Kelly Schedin and Mathieu Loosvelt, went into the primary classroom today. The young students were asked to invent their dream machine and make...
A worldwide call to primary education schools to come up with dream machine ideas. Children from all over the world have responded and dropped their dream machine idea on the world map of MyMachine DreamsDrop. After a selection of all ideas, today, at the request of MyMachine, 100 higher education students Industrial Product Design at...
Yesterday the university students participating in MyMachine South Africa went to the primary schools for the ideation of dream machines. The question “What Is Your Dream Machine?” unlocked the creativity and imagination of children of two Grade 1 classes and sparked the creation of 53 Dream Machine Ideas. Engineering students from University of Cape Town...
Today Erica Elk from Cape Town presented MyMachine South Africa at the UNESCO Creative Cities Conference in Torino, Italy. The UNESCO Creative Cities Network is launched in 2004 to promote cooperation among cities which recognized creativity as a major factor in their urban development. As of 2017, there are 180 cities from 72 countries in...
80 children from an elementary school in Belgium tested their ‘time travel machine’, the result of a cooperation between schools and organizations in Belgium/Flanders and South Africa. Next week the South African children will have their final show!
Pupils at the Berzelia Primary School Atlantis discovering the final stages of the production of their own dream machine: the tele-time-machine!
South African inventor Valentino, 10 year, dreamt of a special time travel machine. With this machine he could fly anywhere and back in time to see everybody back again. At this moment the machine comes to life in a technical school in Atlantis, South Africa. Thanks to the hard work and enthusiasm of Howest design...
Monday February 24th was the big day. The MyMachine team met the children from the Berzelia Primary School in South Africa. And the team was impressed by the drawing skills of the children and their imagination. At the end every kid had his own dream machine on paper, and together they made up a top...
MyMachine North-South Part II is on. Belgian students Jirko Van Lierde and Lies Seys are exploring Western Cape in South Africa along with Howest Head of Department Ronald Bastiaens and meeting with our friends from West Coast Community Foundation and CPUT in Cape Town. We’ll keep you informed. You can follow their adventures on the MyMachine website...
Thanks to the global network of the Global Fund for Community Foundations, The Community Foundation of West Flanders (one of the founding partners of MyMachine) got in touch with the West Coast Community Foundation (WCCF) in Malmesbury, South Africa. This enabled a partnership between MyMachine vzw and WCCF and was the start of the pilot...
The exhibition and Design for Impact-lecture during the ‘Design Week 2013′ highlighted the final part of the North-South-pilot. MyMachine produced a lot of enthusiasm amongst the visitors. MyMachine is looking back to a successful pilot year. ‘MyMachine 1 +1 = 3’ – a spin-off of the basic MyMachine concept – allowed us to implement the MyMachine methodology for the first time outside the country’s borders. We found MyMachine to be as attractive and inspiring for...
June 6, 2013 was a big day for all 259 pupils of OLVO Heist (Belgium). They welcomed Scrappy, the recycling robot at school. This dream machine came to life thanks to a cross-border co-operation between the three educational levels and organizations in Flanders and South Africa. The MyMachine team was able to introduce a first...
After a long trip form Cape town to Malmesbury the final dream machine arrived at the primary school were he was invented. On Nov 30th 1000 children welcomed Scrappy, the recycling robot and enjoyed his inauguration during the MyMachine show! Who is Scrappy, the recycling robot? Scrappy is a robot caracter made of recycling materials...
The recycling robot comes to life at the workstation of the Bellville campus of the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. After an one hour drive from Malmesbury the inventors arrived to see the progress of their dream machine being build. Besides this they could enjoy themselves with some creative and interactive MyMachine workshops. This video...
The start of the concept phase meant translating an abstract and wild idea into a realizable proof-of-concept. The result of this challenging process was the final concept of a recycling machine with a high content of play and fun and in which children can collect 3 types of waste. http://vimeo.com/53453742
‘Why do you have to fart after eating beans?’ The chatterbox collected quintessential and amusing questions from Flemish kids to their South African peers. MyMachine searched for answers on the playground of the primary school in Malmesbury: http://vimeo.com/52447360
The MyMachine team stimulates 30 learners to invent and draw their own dream machine. With very orginal ideas the children proofed that not everything has been invented yet. For example: ‘the mobile barbecue machine’ which enables you to enjoy your most favourite South Africa custom everywhere. Or ‘the jokebox’, a machine that collects the best...
On Sept 25th 2012, children from the 6th grade collected information about South Africa (climate, educational system, housing, …) in order to gain insight in the living environment of their peers. What kind of dream machine would they invent for their peers to make their lives easier or simple more fun? What do you think...
Children invent their ‘dream machines’ that can be useful for their own lifes and also machines that will improve the living environment of other children. Did you ever hear about a ‘Hurricanefixer’, a machine that can be used in damaged regions or a ‘Toys-Fold-up’-machine, a machine that delivers the toys to poor countries? MyMachine Foundation received...
