Making community : the wider role of makerspaces in public life

Taylor, Nick; Hurley, Ursula; Connolly, Philip

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.

Citation

Taylor, N., Hurley, U., & Connolly, P. (2016). Making community : the wider role of makerspaces in public life. In Proceedings of CHI 2016 (Human-Computer Interaction conference) (1415-1425). https://doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858073

• Acceptance Date: Mar 1, 2016
• Online Publication Date: May 12, 2016
• Publication Date: May 12, 2016
• Deposit Date: Apr 11, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 11, 2016
• Pages: 1415-1425
• Book Title: Proceedings of CHI 2016 (Human-Computer Interaction conference)
• ISBN: 9781450333627
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858073
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858073
• Related Public URLs: http://www.inthemaking.org.uk; https://chi2016.acm.org/wp/; https://dl.acm.org/doi/proceedings/10.1145/2858036