This piece is the last in an ongoing series on women entrepreneurs addressing community and economic development needs through small-scale manufacturing.

The scent of sawdust greets Gabriella Mooney as she walks through the doors of MASS Collective, heading for an office in the back. It’s a busy weeknight, and Julia Hill – a local master welder, artist and sculptor – is showing a group of five apprentices the tools for MIG welding.

At Hill’s cue, they pull down their masks, and the welding torch lights up the room with sparks. As Mooney walks farther into the shop, she hears the grind of the CNC machine from another class of 10 people and sees several young adults refining their creations with the woodshop sander.

This space has been like a second home for Mooney, who over the past decade has led the charge to create a neighborhood makerspace and apprenticeship program in downtown Atlanta. Despite pressures of commercial displacement in the local arts district, her dedication to purposefully building an inclusive arts-based community shows how makerspaces can create employment and business ownership opportunities for more people.

Mooney grew up in historic Marietta, Georgia, where her parents were always working on their 1903 house: painting it pink, yellow and purple, building a wrap-around porch, constantly repairing the picket fence. Once, at the age of six, she dug out the overgrown backyard with her mother to create their own fountain. They found bottle tops, vintage coins and pieces of pottery that they worked together to turn into the walkway from the house to the new fountain.

When a nearby factory closed, the city said residents could salvage whatever they wanted from the building before it was razed. Mooney and her brother filled a pickup truck with hundreds of bricks and wood slats and transformed them into a small barn with a stage in their yard.

Mooney brought that love of creating to her work running a salon and an independent children’s school, but when a local group started talking about launching a new makerspace in 2012, it caught her attention. A local property owner had offered up an abandoned building and promised sweat equity for any improvements they made. Mooney and a group of volunteers pulled up thousands of carpet tacks, sanded and sealed floors, built bathrooms, and created a gallery and event space.

By 2015, the volunteer leadership asked Mooney to step in as part-time program director and then, in 2020, as full-time executive director. In her new role, Mooney settled on three priorities for the maturing space: creating a formal apprenticeship program, ensuring the space was production-level ready for small business owners, and bringing in instructors who represented the surrounding community.

The apprenticeship program started organically when Mooney noticed a teen named Hank who kept hanging out in the space, as well as a young man named Doran who couldn’t afford classes but was desperate to learn how to use the tools. She knew many people in the neighborhood lacked the money or the skills to use the makerspace, but she also understood that learning to use this space could give them access to good-paying jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities.

So Mooney created an informal apprenticeship program: A few people from the neighborhood would exchange hours working in the shop for training on the tools. They helped build out spaces, fix machines and earned time to create their own projects.

In 2020, she secured funding for a formal apprenticeship program with more structured training sessions and less work around the shop. Instead of five or 10 people in the informal apprenticeship program, they now had a formal curriculum and 20 people at a time in the program. More than 100 locals completed the program, with many becoming instructors, staff, and board members.

Mooney also wanted to help more established craftspeople have a chance to grow their projects. So she created classes to offer continuing education, reaching out to online groups to find a roster of skilled teachers who were typically not seen in local makerspaces.

“I wanted to work in a place that reflected people like me, so more people would feel welcome and comfortable with these tools,” she says. Tonight’s instructor joined the staff after seeing other women lead programming at MASS Collective.

Mooney also made sure the makerspace included professional-grade tools to give local crafters access to tools they wouldn’t have at home. These investments attracted sculptors, wood craftspeople and others working full-time on their product businesses like Cuttlefish Workshop’s custom metalwork, and Domo Woodworking’s bespoke furniture and custom cribbage boards.

Seeing local businesses struggle to keep up with displacement due to rising costs for space, Mooney doubled down on her goal of keeping MASS Collective affordable.

New developments around the nearby stadium and Castleberry Hill were pushing other nonprofits and artisans out of their downtown neighborhood, so Mooney negotiated a discounted rate with the arts-minded property owner that would scale up as the organization could afford it.

Makerspaces like this one are a key ingredient for existing artisan communities, especially in high-priced real estate markets or locations with an overwhelming number of vacant commercial spaces. They give small business owners access to higher-quality and larger-scale tools, provide them with a place to gather and learn from each other, and protect affordable and safe workspaces. Many makerspaces also function as an educational hub, focusing on youth classes or apprenticeships for job training.

All of this can be a win-win for cities trying to revitalize their downtowns: retain locally-owned small businesses with access to affordable space and create a destination where the community can come together. Cities can support makerspaces like MASS Collective through grant funding and technical support to launch new programs like the Maryland Makerspace Initiative.

After 10 years leading the organization, Mooney stepped down as executive director of MASS Collective earlier this year, wanting to ensure that the longevity of the program didn’t depend on one person.

Walking past Hill’s group of 20 new apprentices, she nods at Hank on her way out the door. The teen who just wouldn’t leave 10 years ago is now the executive director.

“It’s essential for new leadership to shape the future of the makerspace and keep bringing their own values into it,” Mooney says. She hopes more partners see the need to support makerspaces through grants and endowments. So many young adults cannot afford, or are not interested in, college, she notes, and this kind of space gives them a place to learn skills that can shape the rest of their lives.

This post was originally published on Next City.