MAKE-IT Vienna Workshop Review

On 1 st of December 2016, MAKE-IT organised a workshop with the title The Maker Movement comes in many shapes and sizes: Insights into Europe’s Maker Scene in collaboration with the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

The workshop was open to all interested people who were somehow familiar with making, either because they had heard about it or because they themselves had more or less experience in making.

Researchers from the MAKE-IT project together with students, educators and practitioners from the University of Applied Arts as well as managers from maker spaces around Europe discussed together about the European’s Maker scene.

After a short introduction to the workshop by the Centre for Social Innovation, which was responsible for the organisation of the workshop, Dr. Alexander Damianisch, director of the Department Support Art and Research at the University of Applied Arts, as a host of the workshop, spoke the welcoming words followed by the very interesting keynote by Prof. Christoph Kaltenbrunner. In his presentation, he brought in international insights into the Maker scene and underlined the importance of bringing making into educational curricula for equipping future generations with relevant digital (and) making skills.

The keynote was followed by ten three-minute pitches. Representatives of European maker spaces (who were either MAKE-IT partners or were being explored in the framework of our case study analysis) brought an object of their maker initiatives that somehow stood for their making and gave a short pitch along the object with the most important facts. After each pitch, the audience had some minutes to ask questions and discuss.

In the interactive part, the workshop was dedicated to discussing preliminary findings regarding key research areas in respect to the organisation of maker spaces, the collaboration of makers, and value creation and impact of making. The discussion was very lively and fruitful; preliminary findings were complemented and validated.

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