Making Community: The Wider Role of Makerspaces in Public Life

Taylor, Nick, Hurley, Ursula and Connolly, Philip (2016) Making Community: The Wider Role of Makerspaces in Public Life. In: Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '16). ACM, New York, pp. 1415-1425. ISBN 9781450333627

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Abstract

Makerspaces public workshops where makers can share tools and knowledge are a growing resource for amateurs and professionals alike. While the role of makerspaces in innovation and peer learning is widely discussed, we attempt to look at the wider roles that makerspaces play in public life. Through site visits and interviews at makerspaces and similar facilities across the UK, we have identified additional roles that these spaces play: as social spaces, in supporting wellbeing, by serving the needs of the communities they are located in and by reaching out to excluded groups. Based on these findings, we suggest implications and future directions for both makerspace organisers and community researchers.

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