Introduction
This module, titled ‘Maker Culture and Fab Innovation’, begins with a general and theoretical introduction to the topic. Ιntending to engage participants in the Maker Movement for multilingualism and multiculturalism, it composes a cohesive introductory guide, encouraging them to actively participate in the movement. Finally, it explores a series of indicative actions ascribed in this framework, while serving multilingual and cultural diversity.
This module aims to provide participants with a full picture of the state-of-the-art developments in the framework of crowd and social innovation with respect to language and cultural diversity. In particular, acknowledging the potential dynamics of the Maker Culture and Fabric [Fab] Innovation in the fields of language diversity, cultural exchange and accommodation, the module intends to enhance this relationship and stimulate participants to design their own initiatives and actions in this line.
Stavros Samiotis, Sofia Papatsimpa, Katerina Zourou
On completion of this module participants will be able to:
- understand and embrace the key-concepts of the Maker Culture: Making, Makerspace, Fab Innovation;
- find out how the Maker Culture could serve multilingual and cultural diversity in society;
- actively participate in designing their own Makerspace;
- establish their own Makerspace for multilingual and multicultural purposes.
The target groups of this module are totally aligned with those of the BOLD project. In particular,
- student teachers in HEIs: this module will critically contribute to student teachers’ capacity in exploiting the Maker framework for designing educational environments that could offer their students an alternative way of engagement in a new language and culture;
- associations from civil society: this module will offer members of civil society and +particularly Making practitioners a perspective of expanding the inclusiveness diomention in Makerspaces with respect to language and cultural diversity.
- Unit 1: It will encourage learners to understand the social function and value of the Maker Culture and Fab Lab Innovation movement.
- Unit 2: It provides learners with a set of hands-on guidelines towards implementing the theoretical principles that have been showcased in the previous unit, thus constituting a practical tutorial for actively embracing the Maker Culture by becoming Makers.
- Unit 3: It presents learners with indicative examples of already existing initiatives while it brings out the educational dimensions of Making and Makerspaces regarding language and culture diversity.
4 hours (including videos)
The module’s main materials are based on a variety of resources:
- Studies and reports issued by distinguished authors and international organisations on Maker Culture, Fab lab innovation, Repair Cafés
- Explanatory videos and video-lectures
- Materials provided by international organisations and HEIs through their official webpages
Unit 1 Introduction
Over the last years, an emerging and growing trend, promoting and supporting people to make their own prototype products or repair those that have been damaged, aims to facilitate them in their daily lives. Do-It-Yourself (i.e. DIY) is a very common and widespread term referring to products, blueprints and actions ascribed to this trend. Understanding it as a more general phenomenon, someone could conclude that making or repairing products stimulates people’s capacities for creation, development and innovation. In other words, people are stimulated to become active by creating, developing and innovating, instead of passively applying already existing solutions or just buying products from the market.
Hence, this unit will focus on examining the Maker movement and the Fabric laboratory spaces by aiming to answer questions such as the following:
- What is Maker Culture?
- What are the fundamental principles of the Maker Culture movement?
- How can Maker Culture be applied in education?
Therefore, the learning outcome of this unit is for trainees to understand the social function and value of the Maker Culture and Fab lab innovation and to become able to get acquainted with the relevant framework and its technicalities.
1.1 Preliminaries
In this section there will be the basic definitions for the terms ‘Maker Culture’, ‘Fab lab’ and ‘Repair Cafés’ (section 1.1.1). Following, the social, technological and educational context which they ascribed on and emerged from will be introduced (section 1.1.2).
1.1.1 Basic Definitions
Maker culture / Maker movement
- Maker Culture / Maker Movement
According to them, this definition has the following three dimensions:
- Making: defined as the “set of activities that can be designed with a variety of […] goals in mind”.
- Makerspaces: defined as “the communities of practice constructed in a physical place set aside for a group of people to use as a core part of their practice”.
- Makers: defined as “the identities of participation that people take” due to their engagement in Maker Culture activities or due to being members of the Maker movement.
To further enhance your knowledge in Maker Culture, you can watch this youtube video, where scholars endeavor to define Maker Culture while sharing their personal encounters with it.
Fabricate Laboratories (Fab labs)
According to the Ewa Orzeszko (2021), Fab labs are “physical spaces, but also virtual communities fostering the creative use of new technologies. […] However, around the world, there is a variety of spaces which operate with similar functions, namely makerspaces, hackerspaces, and medialabs. […] [They] are workshops that offer access to space, tools, materials and knowledge for those who want to implement their ideas and develop their passions. [They also] give access to the latest technologies (e.g. 3D printers, laser plotters, CNC milling machines, electronic devices, computers), but their main idea is what we can broadly define as DIY, improving creative skills and stimulating creativity.”
Finally, in the broader sense of community-driven making, it is worth mentioning the Repair Cafés action, which are defined as follows:
Repair Cafés:
According to the definition provided by the ‘Repair Together’ action, “a Repair Café is a meeting between citizens who are determined not to throw away their objects anymore without trying to repair them”. In most of the cases, citizens bring along goods such as electronic devices, textiles or bicycles, with media technologies being among the most usual ones.
The impact of Repair Cafés is estimated to be:
- environmental: due to the avoidance of significant amounts of waste.
- social: since Repair Cafés become places of social cohesion.
- formative: since knowledge sharing may lead to the development of new skills and competences.
- economic: since Repair Cafés apply and expand the principles of circular economy.
1.1.2 The context
The origins
Delving into history, someone could identify the roots of the Maker Movement back in the DIY (Do-It-Yourself) culture of the 1960s and 1970s, the hacker culture of the 1980s and 1990s, and the open-source software movement emerged at the beginning of the 2000s. Yet the official start of the movement was in the mid-2000s, when the MAKE magazine was launched by Dale Dougherty. The magazine focuses on DIY projects, technology, and creativity, inspiring people to explore various fields such as electronics, robotics, woodworking, and crafting. However, the catalyst event was the organization of the Maker Faire event, a year after the MAKE magazine was circulated, namely in 2006. These events showcased makers, artists, inventors, and tinkerers, providing a platform for them to share their projects with a wider audience.
On the other hand, The Fab lab concept emerged from the Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the early 2000s. The history of Fab labs can be traced back to the visionary work of Professor Neil Gershenfeld, who is considered the founder of the Fab lab movement. The goal of this initiative was to democratize access to advanced manufacturing tools and empower people to turn their ideas into physical objects. Equipped with various digital fabrication tools, Fab labs became a place where students, researchers, and community members could experiment with creating prototypes and developing innovative projects. Today, the operation of the Fab labs network is supervised and regulated by the Fab lab foundation.
Finally, Repair Cafés are dated back in 2009, when a dutch journalist, Martine Postma, credited with starting the first Repair Café in Amsterdam. The idea behind Repair Cafés was to create community spaces where people could bring their broken or damaged items, such as household appliances, electronics, clothing, furniture, and more, to be repaired rather than discarded. The primary idea behind Repair Cafés was to promote sustainability, reduce waste, and encourage a shift away from the throwaway culture that often prevails in modern societies. Today, the operation of the Repair Cafés network is supervised and regulated by the Repair Café foundation.
The technological context
The rise of digital fabrication technologies, such as 3D printers, laser cutters, and other computer-controlled tools, played a significant role in the emergence of both Fab lab movement and Maker Culture. These technologies became more accessible and affordable, empowering people to prototype and fabricate objects that were previously difficult or expensive to create (see indicatively: Hatch, 2013; Gershenfeld, 2007, 2012).
The policy context
Over the early 2000s, the Open principles, especially regarding software and hardware, began to expand to the society, beyond close communities of hackers and digital developers. The Maker movement emphasized sharing knowledge, designs, and projects freely with the community, encouraging collaboration and innovation, while the Fab lab movement adopted these open-source principles, fostering a culture of knowledge sharing and cooperation by providing interested individuals with the resources to do so. Both movements emerged as a response to the growing demand for democratizing access to technology. Both aimed to give people the tools and knowledge to create, tinker, and innovate without the need for specialized expertise or expensive resources (Hatch, 2013; Gershenfeld, 2007, 2012).
The societal context
The Fab Lab and the Maker Movement emphasize community-driven innovation. They provide spaces for people from diverse backgrounds to come together, learn, collaborate, and transform their ideas into tangible projects. These environments foster creativity, problem-solving, and peer learning. Moreover, by providing tools and resources for individuals and communities to solve local challenges, they urge people to address environmental issues, and promote sustainability across their communities and society (Hatch, 2013; Gershenfeld, 2007; Wenger et al., 2002).
The educational context
The Fab Lab and Maker Movement, by promoting experiential, hands-on learning, challenge the conventional paradigm of education merely focusing on theoretical knowledge and standardized testing. Instead, they encourage learning by doing, enabling individuals to gain practical skills and apply knowledge to real-world situations. The applications of Fab Lab and Maker Culture methodologies in education could broaden the perspective and dynamics of learning by allowing participants to engage in learning to the degree they will, to freely experiment with what they are interested in or what they like on the basis of a self determination framework into a (learning) community. However, their potential dynamics still remain unexplored and unknown, pending for further applications and research to be conducted (Halverson & Sheridan, 2014; Hatch, 2013; Schön et al., 2014; Wenger et al., 2002).
1.2 The foundations
This section introduces the basic principles of Maker Culture and Fab Labs.
1.2.1 The basic principles of the Maker movement
In line with the definitions provided above for the Maker Culture and Fab Labs, Chicho (2020), following Schön et al. (2014), points out that the fundamental principle behind those movements is for them “to develop and produce new things that are either digital or physical utilizing new techniques or tools such as 3D printers in open spaces, workshops or labs”. In a more detail, Hatch (2013) in his book titled “The Maker Movement Manifesto: Rules for Innovation in the New World of Crafters, Hackers, and Tinkerers” formulated a set of principles defining the axes upon which the Maker Culture is built on. These are the following [follow the link to read the original text: here]:
- MAKE: “Making is fundamental to what it means to be human. We must make, create, and express ourselves to feel whole. […].”
- SHARE: “Sharing what you have made and what you know about making with others is the method by which a maker’s feeling of wholeness is achieved. […].”
- GIVE: “[…] Giving [an artifact you made to someone else is like giving someone a small piece of yourself.”
- LEARN: “You must learn to make. You must always seek to learn more about your making. You may become a journeyman or master craftsman, but you will still learn, want to learn, and push yourself to learn new techniques, materials, and processes. Building a lifelong learning path ensures a rich and rewarding making life and, importantly, enables one to share.”
- TOOL UP: “You must have access to the right tools for the project at hand. Invest in and develop local access to the tools you need to do the making you want to do. […].”
- PLAY: “Be playful with what you are making, and you will be surprised, excited, and proud of what you discover.”
- PARTICIPATE: “Join the Maker Movement and reach out to those around you who are discovering the joy of making. Hold seminars, parties, events, maker days, fairs, expos, classes, and dinners with and for the other makers in your community.”
- SUPPORT: “[A movement such that] requires emotional, intellectual, financial, political, and institutional support. The best hope for improving the world is us, and we are responsible for making a better future.”
- CHANGE: “Embrace the change that will naturally occur as you go through your maker journey.[…]”