Founded in 2011, Haystack collaborated with MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms to establish a cutting-edge digital fabrication and technology studio on campus, referred to as the Fab Lab. Since its establishment, the lab has become an integral part of the school’s overall mission to think more broadly about the field of craft and expanded into developing new innovative and community programs. In 2016, the Haystack Fab Lab was recognized with the Distinguished Educators Award from the James Renwick Alliance, the first ever given to a program for pioneering contributions to craft education.
But then I vividly remember that summer, the first summer we had the full lab…I like to describe it as a reviewer described when Dylan went electric at the Newport Folk Festival, that half of the audience was electrified and the other half was electrocuted. And so that summer, half of Haystack was absolutely horrified, I was the devil incarnate. I was bringing corrupting technology in this temple of craft, ruining it for them. And then the other half was horrified at the first half to be so naive as to believe looms or blacksmithing or glassblowing is not technology and the miss that it's all technology…and there was this fissure down the middle and this - what is craft and what is technology?
1999 – Kestenbaum is introduced to Mitch Resnick, head of Lifelong Kindergarten Group of the Media Lab at MIT.
2002 – MIT & Haystack collaborate to run a symposium, Digital Dialogues: Technology and the Hand, convening 60 makers, thinkers, designers, and educators for lectures and hands-on activities. Half the group was selected by Haystack, the other half, by MIT. Impromptu labs were set up with a craft representative and technology representative to develop projects.
2009 – Haystack develops and runs a conference, Making: Past, Present, and Future to investigate how artists’ work was evolving with technology. Neil Gershenfeld, founder and director of the Center for Bits and Atoms at MIT is an invited speaker, and brings digital fabrication technology to the campus.
2010 – Gershenfeld is invited back to Haystack as a visiting scientist for two weeks, this time bringing up a mini-Fab Lab setup and continuing to explore the relationship between digital fabrication and artists’ work.
2011 – Haystack constructs a dedicated Fab Lab studio building adjacent to the visiting artist cabin on campus and begins offering access to workshop participants and faculty.
2013 – Haystack moves Fab Lab equipment to the Center for Community Programming in Deer Isle village during the offseason and begins running community workshops for local teachers and students.
2016 — Haystack’s Fab Lab is recognized with the Distinguished Educators Award from the James Renwick Alliance, for pioneering contributions to craft education.
2018 — Haystack launches a paid, high school internship program for local teens to gain job training design experience working in the Fab Lab
2019 — Haystack hires the first dedicated Technology Director, James Rutter, to oversee and direct the program and develop increased educational initiatives and outreach efforts
2020 — The Haystack Fab Lab responds to the pandemic by producing over 6,000 items of personal protective equipment- donated to over 100 organizations in our community
2021 — Haystack Labs convenes for the first time, an experimental program that brings together leaders in the field of technology and craft to explore and innovate.