Christie Mettes grew up in Aruba and went to college in Utrecht, where she studied liberal arts and sciences, with a major in Human Geography and a focus on Latin America & the Caribbean. In 2009 she did her thesis on ecul-tourism in the Wixarika community of Tateikie. In 2011 she worked with a Dutch NGO in Bolivia. After which she went back to the Netherlands to complete a masters degree in Environmental Sciences. As part of this program she researched unusual south-south Migrations in Morocco and interned with Metabolic, a circular economy consulting firm in Amsterdam, where she decided to complete her masters thesis looking at human-environmental interactions around the Mae-Kha in Chiang Mai, Thailand in 2014.

After graduating she went on the co-lead the creation of Metabolic Foundation, with a focus on democratizing technology to empower communities transition towards more sustainable and equitable development. Initially working with the communities around the Mae-Kha. The program came to an abrubt stop the after the military coup d’etat in 2014. She moved back to Aruba with her partner and co-lead Tony Sevold. Here they organized an open workshop at Ateliers ‘89 to build digital fabrication tools out of e-waste and off-cuts.

In 2015 they moved to Kingston, Jamaica and collaborated with Di Institute for Social Leadership, to create science and maker workshops for kids as well a design thinking session for community innovation. In early 2016 the main financial supporter of the program fell out and they had to move back to Aruba.

This is when they used the self-built tools to start Aruba’s first public makerspace, called Brenchie’s Lab, housed at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design Aruba with support from UNOCA and Stimuleringsfonds Creative Industry. In this first year the invited amazing fabbers from the region: Gabi Agustini from Olabi in Rio, Carlos I. Silva from Fab Lab Puerto Rico, Interspecifics from Mexico and Joss Reeves from Port City Makerspace in the U.S. to learn from there experiences. This is when they started to teach design thinking and digital fabrication in the art and design preparatory program.

In 2017 they started a design thinking program to solve plastic on the island with support from BankGiro Loterij Fonds with Lewis Just, and co-built Aruba’s first plastic recycling facility based on Precious Plastics tools. In September of 2017 Christie started teaching environmental science at the University of Aruba.

In 2018 the Academy of Fine Arts and Design Aruba closed down and the makerspace founnd a new home in by the National Library of Aruba. At the same time a partnership was developed with Aruba Futura Foundation to transform an old library bus into a mobile makerspace that would visit schools around the island.

In 2019 they received a grant from UNESCO to develop SDG based environmental monitoring program for the island, with Arduino-based sensor systems, GIS analysis, using tensor flow for image analysis (with Uri Maxima) and Processing to turn data into live story telling (with Sharon Lee de la Cruz). After opening a second branch of the makerspace in late 2019.

2020 was suddenly met with COVID-19 and in the face of a shortage of PPE, the team re-organized to make PPE for Aruba.