Paper long abstract:

Though largely forgotten now, Technology Networks were community-based prototyping workshops supported by the Greater London Council from 1983 until 1986. The aim was to bring together the 'untapped skill, creativity and sheer enthusiasm' in local communities with the 'reservoir of scientific and innovation knowledge' in London's polytechnics. The workshops emerged out of a movement for socially useful production committed to more democratic forms of innovation.

Recalling the radical roots and conflicted experiences of the workshops brings to the fore issues still relevant today in critical debates about inclusive innovation:

• Tensions between prototyping activities for new business development, as distinct from more critical 'technological agit prop' mobilising against prevailing institutions of innovation;

• Working at equitable relations between codified, professionalised expertise and tacit, experiential skills in communities; and

• Uneasy workshop relations with prevailing political and economic structures versus wider movement aims for economic alternatives.

As such, the Technology Network experience addresses the session questions. Whilst ultimately unsuccessful in their overall aims, Technology Networks nevertheless advanced and reshaped a number of progressive technoscientific objects, methodologies and practices; from remanufacturing initiatives, to participatory design, to campaigns against fuel poverty (Q1). The experience also made apparent the cultural, economic and political bases of exclusion, and the sheer amount of dedicated work needed to realise meaningful forms of inclusion (Q2). Such issues, interpreted through careful historical contextualisation, beg critical questions of policy discussions of inclusive innovation today, but also radical aspirations in FabLabs, Hackerspaces and other community workshops today.