Scavenger Labs

Retro / Eco Computer Club

Mon, 25 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Green and Pleasant Computer Club

Motto: Let’s compute like it’s 1999

Summary

Fridays 10:00 to 12:00 at Makery, Tod College, Burnley Rd

The Green and Pleasant Computer Computer Club is a community programme that helps people explore a slower, lighter, and more independent way of using computers. The club draws on Marshall McLuhan’s idea that the medium is the message and treats the early web and email era as a useful template. We focus on practices that predate attention harvesting feeds and AI driven filtering, while reviving the strengths of simple publishing and direct communication.

Jam Lab Business Plan

Wed, 25 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Jam Lab Business Plan (Integrated Draft v4)

Overview

JAMM Labs is a collaborative initiative creates open educational resources (OER) for project-based media and technology learning. It supports research and development processes in collaboration with community and academic partners.

Jam Lab builds on the exploratory work of Noisy Toys and The Makery, and focuses on low-cost, low-impact digital technologies used in expressive, playful, and community-based ways. Activities take place both in mobile formats and at local centres (currently in Todmorden and Hebden Bridge), supported by volunteers and local educators.

Our Todmorden work featured in Iron People showcase

Tue, 01 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Scavenger Labs contributed to The Iron People programme led by Northern Broadsides through workshops and public outputs in Todmorden.

At Todmorden College, Mick Chesterman ran a campaign workshop with students exploring environmental themes, particularly flooding. Steve Summers recorded audio contributions from participants, capturing local stories and campaign ideas developed during the sessions.

This material was developed into campaign content and presented as part of the Gush / Trickle showcase event at Gordon Rigg Garden Centre, Walsden.

Introduction to Physical Computing – now live on RISE

Fri, 01 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

We’re really pleased to share a new self-study course developed through a collaboration between Scavenger Labs and RISE at Manchester Metropolitan University.

This course grew out of hands-on workshops and creative making sessions we’ve been running for years, and also from a moment of change. During lockdown, we adapted our space at Scavenger Labs for filming, working with Steve from Noisy Toys and with Greta supporting the setup. What emerged was not just a filmed course, but a reflection on how our practice translates into digital formats.

Making the Family Fixit Campaign

Tue, 10 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Making the Family Fixit Campaign with Ferney Lee School. A group of campaigners, artists and educators came together with the schoolchildren and staff at the school to create an environmental campaign to reduce waste.

This report describes what we did and what was valuable about the processes we used. It is aimed at other educators who may want to take inspiration from our activities and perhaps reuse them in their own way. The report covers the three main phases of the project

Phase One - Fun and active workshops with recycled waste
Phase Two- Social Action workshops to create a campaign
Phase Three - Communicating the Campaign

Caption - campaign check list

Todmorden Makery - a new maker space project

Fri, 18 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Press Release – For immediate Release

Todmorden Makery A Big Thank You to Todmorden

We have been awarded Town Council grant funding to establish a community workshop located in Todmorden Community College.

Following the success of the pre-covid monthly Repair Café , Mick Chesterman decided more could be done to create a long-term space for people to make, create and repair, as well as provide a home for like-minded community focused projects.

Mick said

“Todmorden Makery is a community workshop for repairing and making all manner of things located in Todmorden Community College. One of the leading contributions to climate gas emissions are the textile and electronics industries. This project encourages repairing objects, sharing tools and spreading knowledge of repairing.

Buggy Battles

Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Buggy Battles

Buggy Battles is now full but please contact - steve (at) noisytoys (dot) org - if you would like to take part in futures rounds. This will be the first of what we hope will become a regular event. Buggies built from recycled materials and controlled by portable programmable devices will battle and race against each other. All participants will get experience at coding and Making and together we can start to build more intelligent, complex and brutal buggies for the next round. Workshops, resources and support will initially be available online through lockdown.

Basel Action Network 'Holes in the Circular Economy'

Wed, 21 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Report on how GPS trackers hidden in e-waste reveal a fascinating story of illegal ‘recycling’ from rich countries including the UK. Read the report here

Also have a look at the BAN website: https://www.ban.org/

World Health Organisation, e-waste and health of children

Wed, 21 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Raising awareness on e-waste and children’s health

50 Million Tonnes

Thu, 08 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Watch us smashing up a printer and disecting a flashing trainer to find out more about e-waste HERE on the Bradford Science and Media Museum youtube.

50 Million Tonnes

…of electronic waste was produced last year. More than ever before, more every year. We buy more, it breaks more quickly, and more of it piles up in the poorest parts of the world.

In this film we learn the way of the Scavenger: all this e-waste is free stuff that we can learn to hack and use for our own inventions. We can learn how the technology works, about where the materials come from and where the waste goes to and what we can do to help the situation. Just maybe we can figure out what are we supposed to do with that drawer full of dead tech that we all have at home.

Date: 26, 27, 28 October - 11am, 1pm, 2.30pm

Free, but booking essential

Family bubbles can sit together.

Book HERE on the Bradford Science and Media Museum Website.

50 Million Tonnes

…of electronic waste was produced last year. More than ever before, more every year. We buy more, it breaks more quickly, and more of it piles up in the poorest parts of the world.

Will technology destroy our planet or could it give us the solutions we need? -

In this show we learn the way of the Scavenger: all this e-waste is free stuff that we can learn to hack and use for our own inventions. We can learn how the technology works, about where the materials come from and where the waste goes to and what we can do to help the situation. Just maybe we can figure out what are we supposed to do with that drawer full of dead tech that we all have at home.

Report from Green Alliance on Circular Economy

Sun, 05 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Report from Green Alliance on Circular Economy

The Global E-waste Monitor 2020

Fri, 03 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The Global E-waste Monitor 2020 Quantities, flows and the circular economy potential

Article in the Verge

Waste Awareness Project

Sun, 10 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

An estimated 54 million tons of electronic waste are produced annually and we hope to draw people’s attention to this issue, as well as to the consequences of obtaining the materials (including conflict minerals) and disposing of the waste after a very short life-span of usability.

Young people are very receptive to this message as it is often young people in developing countries who are involved in the mining and the waste processing, working in difficult and dangerous circumstances. Young people in rich countries like the UK are subjected to intensive marketing to obtain the latest electronic gadgets and games, which contain more and more sophisticated surveillance tools to profile their user’s lives, and are designed to produce habit-forming behaviour in even very young users. Yet we have less and less control over -or understanding of- the workings of our technology. Often, the technology seems to control the user now, instead of the other way around.

Repair Cafe Feb 2020 Photos

Sun, 23 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Photo Gallery of second repair cafe in Todmorden Feb 2020.

Restart Campaigns for Right to Repair

Sat, 26 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Restart campaigns for the Right to Repair

Photo Gallery of first repair cafe in Todmorden

Wed, 23 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Photo Gallery of first repair cafe in Todmorden 23rd Nov 2019.

PR - Todmorden Repair Cafe

Sun, 06 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Todmorden Repair Cafe

23rd Nov - 12.00 - 16.00

Free Event at the Masonic Hall, White Hart Fold near Train Station.

A repair cafe is when volunteers come together to fix visitors things in a friendly cafe style setting. You can even just come along for a brew and a chat.

Find out more at repaircafe.org - or our facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/todrepaircafe

Test markdown

Wed, 20 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000

You can write regular markdown here and Hugo will automatically convert it to a nice webpage. I strongly encourage you to take 5 minutes to learn how to write in markdown - it’ll teach you how to transform regular text into bold/italics/headings/tables/etc.

Here is some bold text

Here is a secondary heading

Here’s a useless table:

Number	Next number	Previous number
Five	Six	Four
Ten	Eleven	Nine
Seven	Eight	Six
Two	Three	One

How about a yummy crepe?

Photoswipe Gallery Sample

Mon, 20 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Beautiful Hugo adds a few custom shortcodes created by Li-Wen Yip and Gert-Jan van den Berg for making galleries with PhotoSwipe .

Sphere

Triangle

Big Image Sample

Tue, 07 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

The image banners at the top of the page are refered to as “bigimg” in this theme. They are optional, and one more more can be specified. If more than one is specified, the images rotate every 10 seconds. In the front matter, bigimgs are specified using an array of hashes.

Test markdown

Fri, 20 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Here is some bold text

Here is a secondary heading

Here’s a useless table:

Number	Next number	Previous number
Five	Six	Four
Ten	Eleven	Nine
Seven	Eight	Six
Two	Three	One

How about a yummy crepe?

Test markdown

Fri, 20 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Here is some bold text

Here is a secondary heading

Here’s a useless table:

Number	Next number	Previous number
Five	Six	Four
Ten	Eleven	Nine
Seven	Eight	Six
Two	Three	One

How about a yummy crepe?

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Mick Chesterman

My current passion is teaching and researching diverse forms of digital and physical making. This involves digital game making and building arcade machines, physical computing and anything to do with the web and media making. Whenever possible I’ll bring in elements of play, social justice and thinking in systems.

My PhD in Education (ESRI) at Manchester Met is focused on game making with families. Game Design Patterns have jumped out of my research as an area of interest. Firstly leveraging the broad recognition of game patterns and secondly tapping the value design patterns as a way into learning coding.

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Jam Lab Planning Notes

Overview

Ownership / Structure of Jam labs

Jam labs is a new strand of activity of the Scavenger Labs company which focuses on creating packages of OER to support project-based approaches to STEAM and undertaking paid R and D work with partners.

It is a partnership between Steve Summers from noisytoys.org and Mick Chesterman who works as Manchester Met School of Education.

Our ethos it to do partnershiph work but to keep the financial structure of the project and the branding as simple as possible in case we want to separate activities in the future.

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Jam Lab Business Plan (Refined Draft)

Overview

Jam Lab is a new initiative developed under Scavenger Labs. It focuses on creating open educational resources (OER) for project-based STEAM learning and carrying out funded research and development (R&D) in collaboration with partners.

Led by Steve Summers (Noisy Toys) and Mick Chesterman (Manchester Met School of Education), Jam Lab is built on a collaborative ethos while retaining a lean financial and branding model. This approach allows flexibility for separating activities in the future if needed.

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Jam Lab Business Plan (Draft)

Overview

Jam Lab is a new initiative within Scavenger Labs, focused on creating open educational resources (OER) that support project-based STEAM learning. It also aims to undertake paid R&D projects in partnership with others.

Jam Lab is led by Steve Summers (noisytoys.org) and Mick Chesterman (Manchester Met School of Education). The project is built on collaborative values while maintaining a streamlined financial and branding structure that allows for flexibility and future separation of activities if needed.

About Scavenger Labs

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Scavenger Activities

Scavenger Labs is a Community Interest Company working in the area of technology and education. It is the parent company for several ventures. As a company we now have a greater focus on documenting and disseminating our work to informal, community and home educators. We are seeking partnerships, and to provide services to other organisations to help achieve these goals.

Our most recent venture is called JAMM Labs, it’s a new venture to develop, document and disseminate our work. At JAMM Labs we develop educational materials for innovative and inclusive project based learning in the areas of science, coding and media production. Our ethos is driven by dedication to the themes of wellbeing, agency and sustainability.

FLOSS Manuals

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

FLOSS Manuals

When we set up Scavenger Labs in 2018 one of the reasons was to create a legal vehicle for the FLOSS Manuals project to replace the previous one based in the Netherlands. As such the company is called Scavenger Labs FM, the FM being for FLOSS Manuals.

About FLOSS Manuals

FLOSS Manuals was founded in 2006 to provide free, high quality documentation for free and open source software. The project pioneered collaborative authoring, book sprints, and remixable manuals that could be downloaded in many formats. Hundreds of contributors produced manuals in multiple languages covering creative, technical, and educational software. The original site remains online at flossmanuals.org.uk, and many of its ideas continue to influence open documentation projects today.

JAMM Labs

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

JAMM Labs Mission Statement

Draft text: not for distribution. See also:

JAMM Labs Overview

JAMM Labs is a new project of the Scavenger Labs company which is founded on exploratory, expressive and collaborative uses of low cost, low impact, open source digital technology.
JAMM Labs builds on the existing work of Steve Summers with Noisy Toys, the Todmorden Makery workshop, and Mick Chesterman’s PhD research on collaborative game making.

JAMM Labs Projects

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

JAMM Labs projects

The projects here are divided into those currently active, and those requiring more development. We include those needed development as a way of gauging interest and also as a way of encouraging partnerships to develop them. Please contact us if they are of interest here.

Currently Active JAMM Labs projects

Game making with text code (JavaScript)

Making retro arcade games is a well explored way of learning how to code. It’s engaging, especially for people that like to play games, but just about everyone has some knowledge that will help you.

Our Services

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

We are keen to work on partnership projects that align with our focus on community-driven, ethical and sustainable approaches to education and technology.

Research Partnerships

We collaborate flexibly with academic institutions and other partners through community-focused, ethical and sustainable approaches to education and technology. Our work in this area includes:

Academic and exploratory collaborations: Open-ended research and creative development with universities, local government and other institutions, including learning design, pilot project facilitation and documentation.
Learning design and facilitation: Support for designing and delivering educational experiences, workshops and courses, with a focus on informal education, inclusion, neurodiversity and playful approaches.
Open Educational Resource (OER) creation: Project-based learning kits developed for community and educational use. See more details below.

Partnership case studies

Manchester Metropolitan University (RISE programme) – co-created OER on systems thinking and physical computing and supported outreach activities.
Northern Broadsides – campaign support and installations for end-of-project events.

Lead: Mick Chesterman

Our Ventures

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The following ventures exist under the umbrella company of Scavenger Labs C.I.C. They share a common ethos of a community-driven, ethical and sustainable approach to education and technology.

Noisy Toys

Noisy Toys was founded by Steve Summers in 2007 as an educational service to combine aspects of science with music and creativity; learning through ‘hands-on’ activities. http://noisytoys.org

Noisy Toys provide interactive installations, educational activities and stage shows for schools and events all over the country. Steve is a musician, artist and performer who specialises in upcycled instruments. He has tested thousands of noses all over the country, butchered hundreds of computers and spawned many strange new instruments.

Scavenger Labs People

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Scavenger Labs People

This section includes bios of our team and photo galleries of the team in action on different projects.

Home Education workshops

One of our favourite activities are our Home Education workshops. We love finding the right kind of challenge and support to fire up home ed families. We also provide a lot of home based learning activities for free via our partner project FLOSS Manuals.

Steve Summers, and Mick Chesterman are our Home Ed team based in the Makery workshops in Todmorden College.

Strawberry Tarts Recycled Laptops

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Strawberry Tarts

Strawberry TARTS are recycled laptops which have been installed with a Linux operating system. TARTS stands for The Adaptable Recycled Teaching System.

The Strawberry TARTS Federation invites you to share your resources on using Linux and Free Software applications.

Learning about computers has never been so important. Digital communication is becoming vital for many people. As technology and surrounding issues become more complex we need to learn more about it to be able to make informed decisions.

UnMaking with Scavenger Labs

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

On this page we hope to give some simple advice on what you can do with your dead tech, and to provide useful links where you can find out more.

Go to our list of ewaste information and find out more.

Electronic Waste

Over 50 million metric tonnes of electrical waste was produced globally in 2019. This is more than the combined weight of all of the adults in Europe. 350 cruise ships would weigh the same amount- and this is just what is produced in one year.

UnMaking with Scavenger Labs

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Unmaking

Screwdrivers in hand we will take apart old computers and other electrical cadavers and find the treasure inside, and then we learn how to easily and safely turn it into mechanical, acoustic and electromagnetic instruments that we use to make glorious noise machines.

Unmaking is great because:

1- It’s fun to break things. There is no better way to re-establish the natural relationship between human and technology than by taking a hammer to it (although we tend to use screwdrivers in a workshop setting).

UnMaking with Scavenger Labs

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Unmaking

We didn’t invent this- people have been dismantling things as long as they have been mantling them. We did invent the term ‘Unmaking’ so it’s only fair that we should get all of the credit, because that’s what branding is all about.

How?

Jump down to our Guide to Unmaking HERE. Avoid the hazards are reap the rewards.

We are producing a short video ‘the Art of Unmaking’ in association with the Festival of Thrift Upcycled 2020 which will be released as part of the festival September 12-13. Check back here for the link.

Workshops, Installations and Activities

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

This page gives an overview of our current workshops and activities. It starts with our more structured workshops and the second part of the page describes some of our drop-in activities and installations.

Upcoming Public Workshops

We are running some workshops for home educating families starting in October 2021.

Age Range - 10-14
Dates: Mondays starting November 1st till 13th December
Cost per course - £95 for 7 sessions - (discount if you also book both £150)
Location: Todmorden Makery in Todmorden College
Mondays 12.00 - 13.45 - Making and Coding (Game Making) - Making games together as a fantastic and fun way to learn real computer coding practices and hands-on making skills
Mondays 14.30 - 15.45 - The Science Lab -A series of introductory science workshops exploring key concepts in biology, chemistry and physics in a safe, fun and inclusive environment