A Taxonomy of Maker Spaces

After a great opening panel at ANZCA 2017 (which I didn't blog because discussion panels are generally too difficult to blog) I'm now in the first paper session, which starts with Pip Shea's paper on maker spaces. She presents a number of case studies from around the world, including the cross-sectarian Temple project from Northern Ireland; these create local civic communication worlds.

Others, though, focus on global civic communication worlds, addressing major transnational issues such as climate change and sustainability and working to create global knowledge bases. These also interface to globally connected grassroots initiatives.

Some maker spaces take this even further and seek to build distributed communication worlds, focussing especially on maximising the reach of these civic communication channels. But all these forms still struggle against traditional views of civic engagement as limited to rational political debate. There is also still a need to nurture greater diversity within these spaces, and develop more appropriate platforms for the dissemination of designs.