About the project
Context
The Maker Movement is a contemporary subculture built around values relevant to the sustainable development goals – sharing resources, peer learning, addressing waste, reviewing production flows to optimize the use of resources, repurposing materials. Those who adhere to this movement are Makers. Their activities are a technology-based extension of DIY culture, meaning that is started with DIY but grew in a more skill-oriented occupation and developed into
entrepreneurial and/or social economy initiatives. Typical activities of the maker culture include engineering-oriented pursuits such as electronics, robotics, 3-D printing, and the use of computer numeric control tools, as well as more traditional activities such as metalworking, woodworking, and, mainly, its predecessor, traditional arts and crafts.
Some examples of makers and maker activities can be seen on youtube with international headliners such as Diresta and Simone Giertz but can also be found on a local level, like our very own Nod Makerspace makers.
The three partner organizations are innovators and forerunners of the maker movement:
- Nod Makerspace is the first makerspace in Romania, has been the reference in the field, has shared expertise and supported the development of such organizations throughout the country.
- Transit Projectes focuses on community engagement and uses the maker movement to promote human rights and education, fight social exclusion.
- FabLab is managed by the Institut d’Arquitectura Avançada de Catalunya (IAAC) which pools resources from academia to develop research and educationprojects stemming from the maker movement.
All partner organizations have identified a need to better define and refine their practice, bring together resources and share their know-how on business modelling, community engagement and sustainable development goals to address environment and climate change objectives through their activity. In order to achieve this goal, we will be mapping organizations, communities and informal groups of makers throughout Europe, relevant to the maker movement, question their practices and bring together this know-how on challenges and opportunities identified on business models, community engagement and sustainable development practices into a best practices guide, The Maker ABC, freely available to all who wish to adhere to the values of the maker movement and transition into making this a sustainable entrepreneurial activity with impact in their communities.
What we plan to achieve
The Guide comes in ABC format, it being a collection of terms in alphabetical order, with each term defined by the partners as they see it in the maker context.
The guide will consist of three parts:
1. a methodology about identifying the maker’s needs
2. a series of examples of how the 3 stakeholders have addressed the maker’s needs and advice from experts
3. a linguistics exercise in which we see the terms used for concept form Maker Culture in different languages
The Guide
International training workshop structured around one of the three key subjects we’re focusing on this project: Entrepreneurship.
The training will last 3 days and will consist of a presentation of the use cases of the stakeholders, expert consultations, and a visit at one objective of interest for the project (such as, amongst others, a different co-working space or makerspace, an industrial facility or community space regarding making).
Sessions will be facilitated.
Each stakeholder will bring 5 participants for the workshop and the hosting stakeholder will provide a facilitator for the panels and at least one expert in the field that gives the workshop theme.
