Tucked away on University College London’s main campus in Bloomsbury is the Institute of Making, the university’s in-house makerspace and materials library. Founded in 2013 by academics at UCL, the goal of the Institute of Making is to provide a place where students and staff can get hands-on experience with tools of all kinds –
As part of this year’s EMF Camp I organised a workshop to share information on how to build inclusive makerspaces. In the first part of the workshop I presented some of the results from my research on diversity and inclusivity issues in makerspaces, then I opened the floor up to a roundtable discussion with other
I’m currently on a research trip in New York that just happens to coincide with the annual World Maker Faire, held in NYC every September. Needless to say I jumped at the chance to check out one of the biggest Maker Faires in the world. This year was the 9th World Maker Faire, and as
This year was my second visit to Electromagnetic Field, the UK’s hacker camping festival, and by a weird twist of fate this year’s camp was held at the former site of a music festival I used to work at around 10 years ago. The new site was a lot bigger than its former location in
I’ve written a practitioner reflection piece for the Journal of Peer Production Issue 12, where I talk about the efforts that maker communities around the world are making to be more inclusive and accessible. It’s a special journal issue on the institutionalisation of makerspaces, so check it out for a bunch of other interesting papers too!
Earlier this month the Tate Modern hosted a mini exhibit on shared machine shops (i.e. makerspaces) as part of its Tate Exchange program. It featured a couple of photos from my fieldwork in the USA this summer alongside an audio piece featuring recordings from my hackerspace back home in Brighton. Read more about the exhibition here.
The Factory is a makerspace offering digital fabrication courses and product design and manufacturing services from a shiny new business park on the edge of the Knowle West housing estate in Bristol. The Factory is part of the Knowle West Media Centre, a charitable arts organisation that has been supporting the local community in Knowle
I’m currently working as a research assistant for a team at UCL’s Institute of Education that’s investigating the educational and identity equity potential of makerspaces for young people from socially disadvantaged backgrounds. Back in July we organised a research symposium at UCL’s Institute of Making. Read their write-up of the event here.
Seattle Attic is a feminist makerspace in the suburban Fremont neighbourhood of Seattle. Since opening in 2013 they’ve inspired various other feminist hackerspaces to open around the US, including Double Union in San Francisco (which I wrote about in an earlier blog post). The Attic aims to be a welcoming place for women to work
Mothership HackerMoms is a women’s makerspace in Berkeley, California, just across the Bay from San Francisco. Its aim is to provide a community and co-working space for women with childcare responsibilities who otherwise would find it hard to have time to work on their own projects and may end up staying at home and becoming