Participants will learn how liquid cultures are used for growing pure mycelium materials and how to work with specialised mycelium cultivation equipment.
Through a guided hands-on session, you will work in a BSL-1 Lab environment and gain practical experience on sterile technique, growth media, handling cultures and inoculating your own jars. These techniques have a wide range of applications but are adapted for designers and makers in mind, to make scientific processes accessible for creative practice even outside of the laboratory.
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This is part one of a two-part workshop series exploring the full lifecycle of mycelium leather from living culture to finished textile. Blending laboratory methods with craft-based processes, participants will gain hands-on experience with mycofabrication techniques.
Each workshop can be taken individually or as part of the full journey, where you will gain a complete overview of the biofabrication techniques used to grow, transform and finish fungal materials.
You will learn:
Sterile technique and how to work safely with a flow hood
Different liquid media types and how to autoclave and sterilise them
How to modify jar lids with injection ports and filter patches
Inoculating liquid media.
You will take home:
Your own jars of live mycelium liquid culture or kept at the lab to grow
The knowledge and tools to continue growing outside the lab
Meet your instructor
Akir Hall is a London-based biodesigner and material researcher working at the intersection of biofabrication and craft. A graduate of the MA Biodesign, Akir works with living systems blending artisanal techniques with biotechnology to develop products grown from bacteria, fungi.
Alongside his studio practice, Akir shares his research through lectures and hands-on workshops designed to make complex biotechnologies accessible to designers, artists, and makers. His previous workshops include Microbial Materiality (natural and microbial dyes for bacterial cellulos