[hackerspaces] hacklabs.org

[Kris Gesling]

Yeah I'm hoping that in Newcastle we can run it without membership fees as
they do deter people who can't afford to pay. I'll have to remember the 'p2p
free universities of hacking' because that pretty much sums up what I want
to do in a nutshell.

The only bit I'm confused about is how autonomy can be used to privatise
educational institutions? I don't see that as providing them with greater
autonomy unless it was the wish of everyone within the institution that
wanted to be private. In my experience it's the chancellors and the top
administrative hierarchies that push for privatisation to maximise executive
pay and bonuses and that is them removing the democratic authority from the
autonomous staff and students.

Do you think persuing alternative funding such as providing services to the
broader community could be good or may it simply end up that the group is
focused too much on that work and the hackerspace side of things gets pushed
to the back. Currently we're being funded by the student union at the
university but the hope is that we will be able to move into the city with
our own space and we were planning on providing IT and web services to local
community groups and perhaps small businesses in order to subsidise or even
pay for it all. Though understandably we'll still have to come up with some
other funding as we couldn't rely solely on that.
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