Making Can Be erapeutic
In the spring of 2021, the pandemic was taking
its toll on everyone, especially our youth. When
our son was diagnosed with cancer, everybody
came around us and took care of us. If Matt
had suffered from depression, anxiety, or
schizophrenia, or had tried to commit suicide, our
experience would have been quite different. And
that breaks my heart. Today, so many kids have
mental health problems.
We know that making can help in a behavioral
health setting. If you sit a teenager down and you
say, “OK, today I want to talk to you about your
feelings. Will you share them with me?” — you
know that they aren’t going to say a word. But if
we start working on a robot together, or we start
building a cardboard bridge, we engage them and
provide an opportunity that they will open up.
The demand for mental health needs had
increased at our sister hospital, UPMC Western
Psychiatric, and it was bursting at the seams
with new inpatient youth. We decided that having
a makerspace in a mental health hospital could
not only be therapeutic but would meet the
increased needs of this inpatient population.
With the Children’s Museum staff, we designed
a wonderful space for the outpatient building. In
the fall of 2021, we opened our first Matt’s Maker
Space in a mental health facility. This outpatient
building contains a school environment where the
patients go prior to being fully discharged back to
their home schools.
This past spring, we opened a space in the
inpatient hospital as well. It will serve ages 3 to
93.They have youth, adolescent, geriatric, and
schizophrenic units and treat some pretty difficult
cases. All of the therapists were trained at the
Children’s Museum, where they went to Maker
Educator Boot Camp and learned how to facilitate
maker activities. They bring small groups to the
space and do group therapy while they make. It is
really amazing.
Makerspace: e
Bridge to Healing
I found very soon after we lost Matt that people
did not want to talk to us about Matt. They didn’t.
But now they are interested in talking about the
makerspaces.
When a parent loses a child, the key to moving
along in their grief is making meaning out of that
loss. David Kessler worked closely with Elizabeth
Kübler-Ross, the psychiatrist and researcher
who wrote about the five stages of grief. In his
own book Finding Meaning, Kessler says there’s
actually a sixth stage. After you’ve been through
the fifth stage, which is acceptance, the sixth
stage is finding meaning.This is our way to get up
in the morning after losing a child. This is what
we're doing with Matt’s Maker Space.
We are able to celebrate Matthew and tell the
world about him. We didn’t name the spaces
the Matt Conover Memorial Makerspaces. We
didn’t want that, but calling it Matt’s Maker Space
always evokes the question anywhere we go.
“Who's Matt?”
And the story goes on. Over $1 million given,
33 spaces and equipment, teacher training and a
bright hope for the future. All because of a sweet
boy named Matt who loved to tinker!
—Noelle Conover
Many people shook their
heads when we donated
to a public school system,
since it is not common.
But we knew it was an
investment that would
launch something bigger.
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make.co
Learn more at mattsmakerspace.org
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