News

December 14, 2015

The Maker movement evolved out of Punk and DIY culture and has grown at a rapid pace over the past six years, spurred by the creation of Make Magazine and the Maker Faire. A manifesto has been published (Hatch, 2014) and ‘how-to’ guides on making and building makerspaces abound (Makerspace.com, 2012; Bagley, 2014; Kemp, 2013; Lang, 2013). Touted as havens for techies, artists, and entrepreneurs, makerspaces are being developed at an astounding rate, both domestically and internationally. Makerspaces are community-operated facilities that provide access to the tools of production, usually wood shops, metal shops, and digital fabrication technology.

March 18, 2015

This blog post is the fourth of five of the blog post series, “Making and the maker movement: A democratizing force or an example of cultural reproduction?” See the first blog post, second blog post, and third blog post.

Spaces and ‘Maker’ activities are promoted as being inclusive, open spaces. Yet, as Dunbar-Hester writes in Radical Inclusion? Locating Accountability in Technical DIY,
The promotion of a sphere in which “universal” technical (or civic) participation occurs may require bracketing inequalities of access and status, which obviously fails to reflect a social reality where certain groups enjoy privilege and dominance relative to other groups. (Dunbar-Hester, 2014)