Where the quiet work of growing begins.
Spore Symposium is a community mycology lab: a calm, shared place with the equipment, the supplies at cost, and the people to help your cultures thrive.
Not ready to commit? Day passes and hardship rates keep the door open for everyone.
A makerspace, but for mycelium.
Sterile technique, good equipment, and community are the three walls every home grower eventually hits. We put all three under one roof, teach you to use them, and split the cost.
The biology and the hardware
Cohort courses that teach cultivation and the smart electronics that automate it. It's the only place in Toronto that teaches both, together.
Equipment you can't justify alone
A laminar flow hood, autoclave, and lab-grade microscopes cost thousands. Split across members, they cost a membership.
People, not just forums
Someone in the room has already solved the problem you're about to hit: dialing in a substrate mix, timing a flush, keeping a culture clean. Ask them, skip the guesswork. Open benches, shared notes, supplies at cost.
One path, from curious to cultivating.
Start free and go as deep as you like. Each step opens the next, and the last one hands you a key to the lab.
Get on the list
Leave your email (no commitment). We'll tell you when courses open and what's new at the lab.
→Take a cohort
Hands-on classes capped at eight. Biology, electronics, or both, each with a kit you keep.
→Build it for real
Leave the flagship course with a working smart incubator, a live culture, and timelapse footage.
→Join the lab
Keep growing with shared equipment, supplies at cost, and a community that wants you to succeed.
→Four courses. Each one opens the next.
Two ways in (biology or electronics) that meet in the flagship build, then climb to real lab mastery. Every course stands on its own, and points to where you go next.
Intro Mushroom Cultivation
Grow your first mushroom from a liquid culture, and learn the sterile technique everything else builds on. No electronics.
Learn more →IoT / ESP32 Maker
Build and program a real sensor-driven environmental controller. For makers and coders, no biology required.
Learn more →Smart Incubator Build
Where biology meets electronics. Build a fruiting-capable smart chamber, code its brain, and start a live culture with timelapse.
Learn more →Advanced Lab Skills
Agar, cloning, and making your own liquid culture, so you never buy genetics again. The gateway to the community lab.
Learn more →A living system you built and understand.
The flagship course sends you home with real hardware and a real culture: not a kit you assembled, but a system you understand well enough to change.
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A smart incubation chamber
Heat, humidity, airflow and light, held automatically by an ESP32 you wired and programmed.
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A live culture, self-inoculated
You start it yourself with clean technique, then watch it colonize on your own timelapse.
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The skills to keep going
Not a black box. You leave able to troubleshoot, tune, and grow again on your own.
Where land meets water.
We haven't picked an address yet; we're deciding between a few very different corners of Toronto, and we want your take. See the options and cast your vote.
A mission-driven community lab. Membership goes back into equipment, space, and access: supplies at cost, not marked up.
Spore Symposium exists so curiosity about fungi doesn't stop at the price of a flow hood. We run as a social enterprise: what we take in keeps the lab open and the door wide.
Get on the founding listBe first through the door.
We're opening the first Toronto cohorts and lab memberships soon. Leave your email and you'll be first to know when enrolment and founding memberships open.