Maker-centric: building place-based, co-making communities

In an MIT White Paper the architect and urban planner Susan Silberberg (2012) argued for the value of 'making' in place-making as a means to drive community engagement in the future design of public space. Momentum is growing for a 'making-centric' world', she declared, emphasising the 'deep engagement' and 'deeply inclusive approach' that comes when an enterprise or activity is undertaken in community settings over a period of time. Maker-centric takes this material placed-based approach to engaging communities in speculative co-design. It argues that 'making in place', with all the historical, geographical, cultural, political and economic specificities which that entails, and critically re-imaging place through creative 'place-making', is vital to connecting communities and developing, engagement, assets and agency (Hackney & Figueiredo 2017). As such it builds on findings from a raft of Connected Communities projects and events, most recently the team's contribution to the Utopias Festival at Somerset House July 2016. This was led by Community Partner Craftspace, Birmingham in collaboration with Wolverhampton University, and piloted a proposal for how co-created, creative making might provide a platform for community co-speculation as a form of 'living heritage' (https://cocreatingcare.wordpress.com/maker-centric-2016/).

The project is timely given regional dissatisfactions post-Brexit. Focusing on Midlands' heritage builds on, and provides opportunities to connect with the region's long history of industrial innovation and radical thinking from a contemporary perspective (see Made in the Middle and The Matter of the North BBCR4). Locating the project within such contemporary initiatives as the 'Midlands Engine' of which Wolverhampton University is a part and that aims to 'capitalise on the 'Midlands' natural strengths and assets' (Sajid Javid 2016), and Craftspace's 'Made in the Middle' that is currently is in its eight year (http://craftspace.co.uk/), strengthens currency and relevance. The Midlands is a highly diverse multi-cultural region and place-based making includes making in the private spaces of the home just as much as the public spaces of the town or city. As such we work with minority ethnic and excluded groups to reimagine their locality, including women who, although often isolated have shared interests and skills in domestic making (sewing, embroidery, textiles); assets that if supported can increase agency and opportunity through creative practice and knowledge exchange (Hackney 2013). Partnership working has been at the heart of all our community engagement research to date. It is essential in embedding the research in communities, gaining trust, minimalizing risk and building legacy. This project takes that learning to a new level, not only working with current partner Craftspace as a Community Co-Investigator but also by extending the learning to the organisation's like-minded partner network within the region: Legacy West Midlands http://legacy-wm.org/ and Creative Black Country http://www.creativeblackcountry.co.uk/, for instance, and beyond. The latter involves knowledge exchange through co-making with Terra Vera, an association in Slovenia that supports community resilience through sustainable development in praxis, including a programme of networks supporting women handcrafters as local entrepreneurs. The organisation's remit to work with low-income communities, encourage intergenerational dialogue, provide new opportunities for vulnerable social groups, and promote creative re-use of material and clothes, parallels our research with place-making, 'making exchanges' and maker spaces to promote sustainable thinking, build assets and agency (Hackney 2017). Maker-centric builds capacity and impact through co-making communities that are simultaneously locally embedded in a critical engagement with place, and internationally connected through a shared commitment to making.

Maker-Centric responds to government directives as they are felt on the ground through community and partner organisation needs. The Department for Communities and Local Government says it is 'working to help citizens and communities take action to solve their own problems'. Maker-Centric acknowledges this agenda and provides a grassroots model to inform how community assets can be maximised and shared. The DCMS Culture White Paper March 2016 identifies the government's key priorities which address community needs in terms of digital technology, culture and heritage: ensuring technology and improved digital infrastructure has a crucial role to play in connecting communities, ensuring neighbourhoods are good places to live and work, and establishing new Heritage Action Zones to build and improve relationships between local partners to stimulate the productivity of the historic environment through regeneration and growth. Working with cultural organisations to support communities to realise their local cultural vision, through a new Great Place scheme, it recognises that greater local partnerships are necessary to develop the role of culture in place-making and wants to see strategies developed throughout the country and embedded in local authorities' plans and policies. The West Midlands Combined Authority, additionally, has identified that the West Midlands suffers from a significant shortage of skills both at the lower and higher ends of the skills spectrum (especially manufacturing and IT). Statistics also show low engagement in arts and culture and a high number of people at risk in terms of health.

Developing collective responses to heritage and place-making using hand-crafts and digital technologies to unlock community agency is at the heart of the Maker-Centric methodology. Maker-Centric works locally in the Midlands with communities to establish a network of partners and collaborators, including Creative Black Country, Legacy West Midlands, Soho House Museum, Wolverhampton University, Sandwell College and other universities, museums and community organisations, to persuade policy makers, local authorities and third sector leaders to recognise, value and apply the 'soft power' of creative making as a flexible tool to leverage community agency and active participation in a civil society. Knowledge Exchange with international partner Terre Vera, based in Slovenia, about how to identify and co-creatively build community assets and craft skills, will help them begin to address some of the challenges of settling refugees/migrants into their country, while providing community groups in the Midlands, and especially Maker-Centric's six community ambassadors, with new opportunities to develop their experiential knowledge of the agency of making as a catalyst for change. Maker-Centric builds on community Co-investigator (also Co-I and PI on proceeding research projects that inform this proposal) Craftspace's established connections with third sector and other organisations in the Midlands to evolve models of community engagement using the arts/crafts as a tool for development. Through its existing grass roots networks (in Birmingham and the Black Country) and interactions as well as its national role in leadership and input into policy and practice development, Craftspace is aware of gaps in provision set against local needs. The chosen 'places' for Maker-Centric: Handsworth in Birmingham and areas of the Black Country are rich in assets, both in terms of their ethnically and culturally diverse communities and their strong industrial and cultural heritage; assets, nevertheless, which are often overlooked or ignored. Working with a diverse range of groups, creative approaches and agencies, Maker-Centric aims to co-produce outputs: artefacts, tool-kits, activities, resources, networks, publications and events, which will highlight the community agency in these areas, build legacy and impact.