Fab.Future Ruhr: Launch of New Innovation Partnerships in the Ruhr Region
The kickoff event on November 13, 2026, at the SANAA building in Essen creates space for exchange, new collaborations, and innovative ideas in the Ruhr Region How can new ideas emerge when academia, business, makerspaces, and the cultural and creative industries work more closely together? With this question, the “Fab.Future Ruhr” project will launch on November 13, 2026, with an inaugural kick-off event at the SANAA building in Essen. Funded by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia with support from the European Union, the project aims to connect regional stakeholders, highlight shared potential, and provide new impetus for innovation in the Ruhr region.
Developing New Ideas Together
At the heart of “Fab.Future Ruhr” is the integration of diverse skills and perspectives. The project brings together makerspaces and fablabs, scientific institutions, small and medium-sized enterprises, and the cultural and creative industries. Makerspaces and fablabs, in particular, serve as open high-tech workshops that offer a wide range of opportunities to learn about new technologies, test ideas in practice, and develop initial prototypes.
The kick-off event offers insights into the project’s goals and planned formats. Brief presentations from the worlds of entrepreneurship, research, the maker scene, and the cultural and creative industries will provide diverse perspectives on innovation and knowledge transfer. In addition, funding opportunities for interdisciplinary innovation development will be presented. A special focus is placed on exchange: What challenges and needs exist in the region? What areas of expertise can be combined? And how can these be used to develop new collaborations and concrete approaches to innovation? Participants are invited to contribute their own questions and ideas and to help shape the emerging network from the very beginning. Who is Fab.Future Ruhr relevant for? The project is aimed at various stakeholders in the regional innovation landscape. Companies can learn how to use the infrastructure and technologies of makerspaces to develop new products and solutions. The focus is on a hands-on approach that allows ideas to be tested and concrete applications to be developed. Researchers are given the opportunity to find new transfer partners and identify application scenarios for their research findings. Cultural and creative professionals can learn how to translate artistic and creative approaches into practical applications and viable models. Makerspaces, in turn, become part of a regional network where they can showcase their expertise, share knowledge, and establish new collaborations.
Shaping the future together.
In the long term, “Fab.Future Ruhr” aims to strengthen the regional economy’s capacity for innovation and facilitate the transfer of knowledge and technologies into practice. Creative methods such as speculative design are also used to develop future scenarios and derive concrete courses of action for the present from them. The project is being implemented jointly by Ruhr West University of Applied Sciences, Ruhr University Bochum, and Kulturforum Witten AöR. It is funded by the State of North Rhine-Westphalia as part of the “Regio.NRW – Transformation” funding program, using funds from the European Union’s European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).
Event Information
The project kick-off will take place on November 13, 2026, from 10:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. (Doors open at 9:45 a.m.) at the SANAA building, Gelsenkirchener Straße 209, 45309 Essen.
Registration is available at https://eveeno.com/119227880. Another project kickoff event in the eastern Ruhr region is scheduled for January 2027.
