BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — The Birmingham Public Library has reopened its Create 205 Lab at the downtown Central Library with a full makeover aimed at the more than 100 students who show up at the building every afternoon once school lets out.
Ed Farm, Shipt and Target teamed up with the library on the redesign. Older kids now have 3D printers, Cricut cutters, studios for podcasts and video, recording booths and esports gear. Younger children get their own corner with a LEGO wall, places to build and a spot to read, since the youngest learn best through play.
Library executive director Janine Langston said the steady after-school crowd drove the design, and that the goal was to add new technology while making room for open-ended creating, where kids can make things with no right or wrong answer. Before any work began, the library sat down with students in listening sessions to hear what they wanted.
Roughly 100 volunteers from Target and Shipt, working alongside United Way Hands On, finished the work in the days before the unveiling. They put together furniture, installed equipment and painted a Birmingham skyline mural on the wall. The project came out of Target’s Bullseye Build program.
The lab is not only for kids. While school is in session, the library plans technology and computer classes for seniors, and evenings and weekends could bring workshops and other community programs.
The lab has a longer history at the library. In 2023, Birmingham-based Nucor Tubular Products put $10,000 behind the original Create205 Learning Lab, a hands-on technology program for young patrons. Ed Farm, which designed the new space, was founded in 2020 by Apple and the Alabama Power Foundation, and earlier this year it helped launch a similar North Star Learning Lab at the library’s North Birmingham branch, built to reach upward of 1,600 people each year.
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