These facilities, which are dedicated to creativity and experimentation, are temples of discovery where young people can use new media creatively to build their own digital projects by controlling robots, 3D printers and cutting lasers, under the supervision of experts.

Six makerspaces have been implemented as a first stage; they are located at Forum Campus Geesseknäppchen in Luxembourg, Lycée technique d’Ettelbrück, Lycée technique d’Esch-sur-Alzette, Lycée des arts et métiers, Lycée de garçons Esch and Lycée Schengen de Perl.

The makerspaces form part of the Digital(4)Education global strategy devised by the Ministry of Education, Childhood and Youth. On the one hand, education must offer each youngster the best future prospects by developing their skills. On the other hand, it must enable all children and youngsters, regardless of their social background, to access ICT technologies and modern, quality educational resources.

During the inauguration of the first makerspaces, minister Claude Meisch highlighted the need for schools to contribute towards training tomorrow’s ICT specialists and promoting entrepreneurship. Besides training these specialists, Luxembourg is making a lot of efforts to attract talent from around the world to make up for the growing shortage of qualified staff in the ICT field.

“Experimenting, developing young people’s experience and fostering exchanges: this is the underlying idea of the makerspaces” says Nadine Schirtz, who is the coordinator of the “Bee Creative” initiative.