FredWorks is foremost a community of makers who explore and extend their ability to create, maintain and repair the things they use. Makers may be motivated by self sufficiency, scientific or technical curiosity or the satisfaction and appreciation gained from doing things themselves. Regardless of their motivation our community of makers seeks to extend their skill set by learning from others and spreading that knowledge through classes, seminars, mentoring and community interaction. FredWorks is also a Virginia non-stock corporation being run as a not for profit operation with federal 501(c)(3) non-profit status.

Our primary goal is to build a sustainable and durable maker community in the local area by providing information, resources, tools, facilities and and organizational framework so that anyone who shares our interests can easily get involved. Artisan’s Asylum can be viewed as a rough model of what we would like to build in the Fredericksburg area although we are looking at doing this on a somewhat smaller scale.

FredWorks started with the Google Plus community “Fredericksburg Hackers” which is made up primarily of a group of people from Fredricksburg, VA and surrounding counties. Previously, we went under the title of Frederickswerken before changing the name to FredWorks in 2014. We all share an interest in applying, learning and teaching a variety of traditional and modern fabrication skills. We are part of growing trend of people who enjoy working with our hands and minds to create and maintain things specifically designed to our needs and tastes. By learning and spreading these maker skills and arts we hope to develop a group of savy self sufficient makers who can help themselves and their community thrive in our rapidly developing and chaotic social and technical world.

Most people affiliated with FredWorks reside in and around Fredericksburg, VA and the surrounding counties. We try to regularly interact with other maker communities or organziations that migh share some of our goals. While our focus will continue to be the Fredericksburg, VA area we see the maker movement as a global phenomenon that we want to take part in.