Nashville and Knoxville Named Top 25 U.S. Maker Cities

KNOXVILLE, TN – Jan. 31, 2019 – Nashville and Knoxville were named the 25 Best Maker Cities in America, according to Popular Mechanics.

All of the communities named in the article focus “on a spirit of entrepreneurship and creativity,” writes author Tim Newcomb. They are “the places that embrace the maker culture and let that ingenuity flourish.”

While Nashville is Music City, it’s now also known as a Maker City. Salvage Goods, for example tinkers with junkyard scraps and transforms them in a variety of products. Seatbelts are transformed into messenger bags, purses and wallets. The founder, Clay Bush, studied fiber arts at the Appalachian Center for Craft and applied his upholstery skills to the array of fashionable accessories available at Salvage Goods.  

Knoxville formed The Mayor’s Maker Council, which convenes local creatives to brainstorm partnerships, programming and opportunities in support of the maker community. The city works with the Knoxville Entrepreneur Center to implement programs of The Maker City, a project that embraces the idea that local crafters and artisans can make a living doing what they love.

Knoxville’s Maker City supports the maker community in a variety of ways: by hosting bimonthly maker meetups and informal lunch-and-learn sessions called Make. Learn. Grow.; hosting the annual Maker City Summit, a daylong conference that brings together a wide variety of experts on making and entrepreneurship for seminars, workshops and one-on-one advisory sessions; curating an online maker directory that makes it easy for consumers to search for handmade goods and contractors to look for small-scale manufacturers and fabricators; teaching free Etsy Entrepreneurship classes to help makers establish online businesses; and publishing an updated list of markets and festivals.

For the full article, visit www.popularmechanics.com/technology/startups/g26061383/best-maker-cities.

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