FabLabs: The Road to Distributed and Sustainable Technological Training through Digital Manufacturing

The fast expansion of digital culture has fostered the creation of makerspaces such as fabrication laboratories (FabLabs) that, thanks to their flexibility and their use of open source tools, strengthen the sense of community and produce true transformations within those communities. Despite their relevance, few studies focus on the characterization of these environments. This paper presents the results of the FabLab Global Survey, aimed at understanding the characteristics of FabLabs through the visions of their managers, or "FabManagers". The results show an enormous diversity of approaches within the FabLab movement that cannot be extrapolated to a single characteristic element, but that allow its global compression. Their properties reveal them as transforming elements that eliminate technological and cultural barriers, empowering user communities and optimizing learning processes regarding digital technology. FabLab activities allow not only economic and industrial development thanks to innovative projects, but also a digital technology approach for young students and the inclusion of minorities at risk, thus eliminating old cultural and social barriers

Opening digital fabrication: transforming TechKnowledgies

This study analyses the field of open digital fabrication where novel digital capabilities and hopes for social transformation have merged to form arrangements that seek to democratise knowledge and technology through collaboration. Through qualitative social science the study analyses FabLabs and open source technologies and the respective collective procedures that produce and organise technology and knowledge that redefine the entanglement of our society and its technologies

Grassroots Innovation Movements

Innovation is increasingly invoked by policy elites and business leaders as vital for tackling global challenges like sustainable development. Often overlooked, however, is the fact that networks of community groups, activists, and researchers have been innovating grassroots solutions for social justice and environmental sustainability for decades. Unencumbered by disciplinary boundaries, policy silos, or institutional logics, these ‘grassroots innovation movements’ identify issues and questions neglected by formal science, technology and innovation organizations. Grassroots solutions arise in unconventional settings through unusual combinations of people, ideas and tools. This book examines six diverse grassroots innovation movements in India, South America and Europe, situating them in their particular dynamic historical contexts. Analysis explains why each movement frames innovation and development differently, resulting in a variety of strategies. The book explores the spaces where each of these movements have grown, or attempted to do so. It critically examines the pathways they have developed for grassroots innovation and the challenges and limitations confronting their approaches. With mounting pressure for social justice in an increasingly unequal world, policy makers are exploring how to foster more inclusive innovation. In this context grassroots experiences take on added significance. This book provides timely and relevant ideas, analysis and recommendations for activists, policy-makers, students and scholars interested in encounters between innovation, development and social movements

Of Women Tech Pioneers and Tiny Experts of Ingenuity

This paper presents findings from a collective case study focusing on the efforts of a grassroots team of seven pioneering women: teachers, IT consultants, and tech enthusiasts. The team was formed to introduce, encourage, and establish makerspaces in the Icelandic compulsory school system by educating and supporting teachers and young students (6–15 years) as makers and advocates of maker culture. All seven team members have developed or supported different models of makerspaces in their area of work and offered guidance to other educators. Our research examines learning on a personal, relational, and institutional level, reviewing values and practices of participants and what characterizes their social interactions, agency and empowerment in relation to making. It introduces new models of pedagogy, often supported by school leadership and social media action facilitating the development of making and maker culture. It attempts to map how makerspaces can be integrated into school practice in alignment with curricular objectives to support diverse engagements, digital literacies and creative design skills. Our findings further reveal how an all-women team has taken agency and through collaborative actions, collective creativity and self-empowerment managed to overcome challenges and provide leadership in this emergent field in Icelandic school practice.This research was partly funded by the European Commission Horizon 2020 Programme, Grant No: 734720.Peer Reviewe