Paper short abstract:

Fab labs are institutionalising, and they are aligning with various institutional partners in ways that indicate pathways of future prosumption in cities. Examining maker culture as an “industrial transitions movement” focuses on the dynamics of alternative and mainstream design and production.

Paper long abstract:

Makerspace and fab lab communities encourage others to actively participate in locally relevant and socially good design and production, by offering shared technology workshops in urban milieu. Such spaces include access to digital fabrication equipment as well as traditional craft workshop facilities. Maker groups align with institutional partners to mobilize publics, and they create and promote sociotechnical imaginaries also at national, regional and international scales. Their visions proselytise openness in democratising and localising technology. Moreover, municipalities leverage maker communities and spaces to explore their own ambitions related to citizen participation, material circularity, creative industry development, and so on. As fab labs have been operating since the early 2000s, they are institutionalising, and their aims and alignments indicate various pathways for how citizens are engaging in production and consumption – such as alignment with education or entrepreneurship. I examine fab labs as an industrial transitions movement and technology- and product-oriented movement (David J Hess). I study how makers engage their publics, with whom they align, and how sustainability is represented in their practices and imaginaries. I will present insights from my longitudinal research on open design and fab lab communities in Europe. I also discuss how Hess’s framework of industrial transitions movements guides analysis of such urban activism, bridging STS, transitions studies and social movement studies, and the tensions of ‘mainstream’ versus ‘alternative’ in maker practices and discourse.