For those of us who mourn the loss of Junkyard Wars, there’s now a traveling hands-on series of workshops called Scrapheap Challenge. The Challenge was created by a research fellow at MIT Media Lab Europe and an artist working with wearable computing and emergent communications infrastructures.
Each Scrapheap Challenge has a different theme (MIDI music devices, wearable electronics, DIY Urban, Street Hacking). There have been Challenges in Europe, the US, and Australia. There are a number of US events coming up later this year in California and Florida, so check the Events page on their site.
One of the things we love about this project, Make and the Maker Faires, Instructables, and a bunch of the other current DIY projects is the openess to people of different skill levels and ages and the willingness to teach those who have the interest but not the chops. A welcome change from the whole l33t h4x0r mentality.
[Thanks, Carl!]