Vulca

Vulca is a non-profit organisation with the mission to support all kind of residencies for makers and to animate the makers movement in Europe

Vulca’s board 2024

Alex Rousselet

PRESIDENT

Alexandre involve in Vulca since the first day. He is our most connected member and of Vulca and love to connect people with each other.

Reach him on Linkedin or Twitter and make sure to talk about hammock! He loves hocking hammock!

Aleksandra Sljukic

SECRETARY

Aleksandra involve in Vulca since 2018 and turned to pilot the organisation of the 3rd and 4th Vulca Seminar in Poland and Croatia.

Just reach her on Linkedin or Twitter and make sure to offer her a coffee! She loves coffee!

Thomas Sanz

TREASURER

Thomas involve in Vulca since 2018 and decided to mobilize his time and energy to create a group of reasearchers around Vulca to help each other.

Reach him on Linkedin or Twitter and make sure to start discussing about geography first! He is a mapping enthousiast

Nicolas Fifre

VICE PRESIDENT

Nicolas involves in Vulca from the beginning. He likes spending time on the cooperation development inside the organization
and thinking about new software/web solutions.

Catch him on on Linkedin or Twitter. You can start the discussion by a fun fact about your country / region! He loves anecdotes!

Jacub Czaplicki

VICE SECRETARY

Jakub has been involved in Vulca since mid-2019.

A physicist by education, programmer by profession actively participates in the Polish maker movement.

Catch him on Linkedin or Twitter
but he is often busy to 3D print toys broken by his lovely kid

Inesa Melnyk

VICE TREASURER

Inesa is involved in Vulca starting from May, 2019.

She likes to collaborate with people and make connections between them.

Adores cooking borscht, walking with dogs and can advise on Microsoft 365 solution.

Reach her out Twitter and LinkedIn

Our advisors

Meta Stular

Policy Makers advisor

Director of Strategic Development and Programmes at Center Rog Creative Hub in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Hank Duke

Private sector advisor

Born in Texas, Hank originally worked as a paramedic, before moving to Stockholm and setting up his own building company. A few years ago, he settled in Prague and opened a DIY Prague workshop for anyone interested in making things with their own hands, from welding or sewing to furniture-making.

In 2020, he moved to portugal to start a project. FAZMOR ! A new makerspace, located in Montemor-o-Novo.

Now in 2024, he is moving to start (again) a new initiative at Ecocentre in the middle of France. An old military base … guess what … ready to host an open-workshop!

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Peter Troxler

Research advisor

Director of Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences

Peter is an independent researcher at the intersection of business administration, society and technology.

He spent +11 years of research professor studying the impact of the (current) « Third Industrial Revolution »:

Impact of direct digital fabrication on (traditional) manufacturing, Impact of an open source culture on design and manufacturing, Value chain, business models, Co-operation and governance, (Regional/urban) development (people, planet, profi)

Our EXPLORERS

Remi

From Bayonne (Fr), Remi is becoming an expert of the south region of France and Nordic part of Spain.

He mostly travel with his converted van and plan to open his own mobile Makerspace.

Jason

From Belgium (Bxl), Jason joined Vulca in 2024 to become an explorer in BeNeLux.

He mostly use public transport and visit workshop over weekend in the BeNeLux.

He is passionate about free software and communities and wants to help makerspaces develop local, national and european cooperations starting in his part of Europe.

Axel

Axel is from Erlangen (close to Nuremberg). In between 2022-23 he visited more than 100 makerspace from Germany, UK, Belgium, France and Austria.

He loves making 360° panorama of each visit

Our MAKERS FOR RESIDENCIES

Alena

Spanish/German, 30 years old, fluent in English, German, Spanish and Portuguese.

Loves analogue machine. Expert in wood and metal workshop.

– Past residencies –
Portugal (Fazmor)

– Coming residency –
To be annouced

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Navid

French, 29 years old, fluent in English.

Active member of OpenFab (Bxl) and expert in making Escape game

– Past residencies –
Feroe Island (FL Vagur)
Iceland (Vestmann Island)
Italy (Ispra Makerspace)

– Coming residency –
Swiss (FL Chaux de Fond)

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Leon

French, 28 years old, fluent in English.

FabAcademy
2 years FabManager exp.

– Past residencies –
Denmark (CPH FL)
France (Mountain Makers)
Slovenia (Center Rog)

– Coming residency –
Italy (Ispra Makerspace)
Swiss (FL Chaux de Fond)

Vulca’s friends

Networks or Collective of Network of Makerspaces close to VULCA

What we do . . .

In 2014 we started exploring the makers’ movement by meeting makers all over Europe face-to-face. The personal connection made us realise the full potential of makers’ community and the impact citizens’ skills and knowledge make at the local level, particularly in spaces such as fab labs, maker/hackerspaces.

All of them are already recognized by the European Commission (DG Joint Research Center)

Why we do it . . .

We firmly believe that mobility brings the M_Hackers community together and enables easier conduction of distributed projects, which would help achieve Sustainable Development Goals.

Furthermore, the cross-border activities would better implement collective solutions in order to reach overall development plans, reduce future economic, environmental and social disparities, strengthen economic competitiveness, increase the quality of education and reduce poverty.

How we do it . . .

Vulca started its field research with the aim to understand the impact of makers’ community. For this purpose, we activate a community of people who are living nomad life to explore M_Hakerspaces in Europe from villages to capitals. Through unlocking the potential of makers’ movement, Vulca is becoming an expert on precisely interconnecting the activities of individual makers/Hackers with fab labs and M_Hakerspaces and also with networks.

The quality of our recommendations is based on the years of experience of our explorers. Being on the field helped us to develop a deep understanding of different thematics and needs of citizens as well as to develop a network that covers a wide geographical scope.

As an example of our work, the recent DG EAC call for Makers Mobility Pilot Project was partly launched based on our proposals to policy makers.