The flourishing of community-based workshops for prototyping new forms of production and consumption using versatile digital design and fabrication technologies can learn from similar community workshops in the past. Experiences with Technology Networks in London in the early 1980s, for example, points to how important are matters of material culture, social movements, and political economy are to these workshops.
The presentation draws on SPRU/STEPS research on grassroots innovation, particularly grassroots digital fabrication.
For more information about the workshop, see the event page (Kingston University website).
Further reading
Two SPRU Working papers and a STEPS Working paper relate to the work:
- Community-based digital fabrication workshops: A review of the research literature (pdf) by Sabine Hielscher and Adrian Smith (SPRU Working Paper)
- Grassroots digital fabrication and makerspaces: reconfiguring, relocating and recalibrating innovation? (pdf) by Adrian Smith, Sabine Hielscher, Sascha Dickel, Johan Söderberg and Ellen van Oost (SPRU Working Paper)
- Socially Useful Production by Adrian Smith, STEPS Working Paper 58
