Icam
20 Oct 2026
It all began 10 years ago with the opening of Icam’s first Fablab, on the Grand Paris Sud campus. This pioneering space laid the foundations for a model that was then gradually rolled out. Today, fourteen Icam campuses have their own Fablab. They share a common identity, values and practices, while each develops its own specific features according to its context, needs and local partners. This diversity is the network’s great strength, making it one of the largest networks of engineering school Fablabs in the world.
A collaborative event reflecting the Icam Fablab network
To celebrate this anniversary, Icam designed a week that reflects the spirit of its Fablabs: collective and collaborative. Teams from the different campuses worked together remotely to build a shared, varied and playful program.
Sharing the same highlight, the campuses offered events rooted in their local areas, such as discovery workshops to introduce their machines and know-how.
Several campuses kicked off the celebrations with the Fête de la Science, France’s national science festival. On 8 October, Icam Grand Paris Sud hosted the fourth edition of Fablabs en fête, organized by Net’Labs Innovation, the network of FabLabs in the Grand Paris Sud area. Nearly 60 middle school students from Essonne and Seine-et-Marne took part in six workshops combining robotics, programming, digital fabrication, electronics and taste-related experiments.
crédit Net’labs Innovation
Other Fablabs held Repair Cafés as part of the National Repair Days, which began on 15 October. Activities already planned on campus also took on the colors of the tenth anniversary.
Workshops, challenges and repairs: Icam campuses in action
On every campus, initiatives multiplied. At Grand Paris Sud, where the network was born, an exhibition entitled “10 Years of Icam Fablabs”, tracing the history of the network, its campuses, its projects and the people behind it, was showcased at the school entrance throughout the week. In a symbolic moment, those who have been there since the Fablab first opened blew out the candles, surrounded by staff and students.
On the Toulouse campus, the FabLab ran a beehive workshop and, as part of the National Repair Days, a “Repair goûter” open to all.
Everyone could bring along damaged or broken everyday items, such as small household appliances, a parasol or even their two-wheeler, and repair them alongside experts and enthusiasts, in a friendly and community-spirited setting.
In Nantes, 25 students took on the escape game challenge, and the fastest team solved the puzzles in 21 minutes and 34 seconds!
Twelve staff members joined one of three workshops: making Halloween and Christmas decorations, digital embroidery or creating personalized chocolates. At the Repair Café, a sewing machine, a vacuum cleaner, a mist sprayer and two bikes were repaired.
On the Strasbourg-Europe campus, the Fablab opted for an open house format: throughout the week, anyone could drop in to try out the machines and have fun, and even take on an unusual challenge: nailing their fab manager’s head!
As a common thread throughout the week, collaborative face-in-the-hole photo boards were designed as totem-like artworks. Users built them from material offcuts, objects salvaged from the workshops or specially made parts. Each one reflects the identity of the Fablab that created it, its practices and what its machines can do.
A new decade to imagine and make together
Deeply rooted in their local areas, Icam FabLabs are ideal places to meet, share know-how and spark new collaborations. This anniversary week brought together the communities that bring them to life.
Through this anniversary, Icam looked back on the road travelled while opening a new decade of projects. Ten years after the Grand Paris Sud Fablab opened, the network continues to pursue the same ambition: to put making, creativity, educational experimentation and knowledge sharing at the service of learning, local communities and collective innovation.
