The Makeathon Manual

The MTF Labs guide to organising and facilitating a Makeathon.

At MTF Sparks in Rijeka, MTF trained teachers from across Croatia to run Makeathons

MTF Makeathons

Welcome to the MTF Labs Makeathon Manual. This guide is designed to very simply get you up and running your own Makeathon, with some examples and tips from our experience with our own Makeathon events. It provides an overview of our Makeathon program, including our pedagogical approach, educational goals, and methodology for engaging and educating young people.

Based in Sweden, MTF Labs has been organising and hosting Makeathons, MTF Sparks creative technology events for teens, and MTF Kids hack camps as part of its larger events around the world and as part of multi-national EU-funded Erasmus+ education programmes since 2012, including the Mind Over Matter project, based on our MTF Sparks methodology and reviewed at 100/100 by Erasmus evaluators.

Our Makeathons are designed as an experiential learning opportunity for young people to engage in collaborative problem-solving through the integration of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM). We also teach organisations and educators how they can run and facilitate Makeathons in the way that we do.

To support that training, this guidebook provides detailed information on how to run a Makeathon, including step-by-step instructions, best practices, and helpful tips. It also includes a variety of resources and tools that teachers can use to design and implement their own Makeathon program.

Making simple electric guitars at MTF Sparks in Liège, Belgium

MTF Labs brings together brilliant educators, experts and facilitators to give young people a fun and educational experience where they build things together to help solve some of the world's biggest problems, learn about science and technology, including robotics, physical computing and AI - as well as principles of physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics, develop important skills like teamwork, creative problem-solving and idea generation, and create music and art along the way.

It's helpful to keep in mind that the purpose of a Makeathon is generally not to deliver a specific learning outcome or teach to a standardised test but instead to meet everyone wherever they're at right now and help to lift them to the next stage of their development.

Makeathons are not about what to learn but how to learn.

We hope that this guidebook will inspire educators to embrace the power of experiential STEAM education and empower young people to become creative problem-solvers and lifelong learners.