New ARPS Committee member, Peter Crowther, on combining his passions of trade union activism and 3D printing to help recruiting and organising in his branch at Birmingham City University.

I’m always after an excuse to 3D print something, you’ll struggle to find something broken in my house that hasn’t been repaired with some 3D printed widget, or a wall in my office without a 3D printed clock (another passion). When my branch at BCU moved to launch a formal ballot for industrial action in March it didn’t take me long to find a way to crowbar 3D printing into the mix.

I’d previously enjoyed making fidget toys.  For the uninitiated, a fidget toy is usually something small that you can hold in one hand that can be usually clicked, squeezed, moved, or manipulated. They are very popular with a range of people and have often been attributed to helping focus while keeping your hands busy. Essentially if you’ve ever been a fan of clicking a biro, you’ll like fidget toys.

I started to investigate how I could adapt an existing design so the toy could also be promotional for the branch. In the end I settled on this design by BaGooN, a user on the model sharing site Printables, like many others he kindly shared his design for anyone to use and modify. The design is a very satisfying clicky wheel.

I made my first design to focus on recruitment, with a simple ‘Join UCU’ on one side, and a QR code linking to the membership form on the other. I was hoping that by handing out these fidget toys it would be a novel way to communicate with potential members, and something that would hopefully stay on someone’s desk longer that a leaflet or a pen. It may even be the thing they reach for when they’re stuck in yet another online meeting!

I was really surprised just how popular they became, and in the end, I printed out about 150 fidgets for our campaign in UCU’s trademark bright pink (you can see a timelapse of me assembling a batch here). They are also fairly cost effective too, my rough maths calculated them to be about five to ten pence to make each (including materials and power).

As we approach Congress and with some remaining pink filament (filament is the raw material used in typical 3D printing) I’ll be making some ARPS fidgets to hand out so try and grab one while you are there.

If you would like to use the designs for your own branch campaigning then please get in touch and I’d be happy to share the files, or help produce a design that works for what you need. I won’t be able to print batches for any other parts of UCU but you won’t be far from a workshop, or even a member in your branch that can print these for you.

Finding a way to involve other passions and hobbies is a great way to make organising more fun and to engage members, for me it was 3D printing for others it might designing posters or leaflets, recording a podcast, or baking cakes, it all creates impact. I’m very happy to say my branch was successful in its ballot and we begin our industrial action soon.