[Blog] Power to the people: making & politics at the Science Museum

The maker movement in the UK, and globally, has grown rapidly over recent years. Hundreds of maker spaces, equipped with 3D printers, laser cutters, design software, as well as old-fashioned hand tools, have popped up in cities, towns and on university campuses, potentially promising new forms of redistributed and community based manufacturing. But who gets to be a maker, where does making happen and what gets made? And what is the wider social significance of this phenomenon? These questions were put to a group of makers and the public during Power to the people, a workshop jointly organised by the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) and London’s Science Museum on Friday 21 October 2016.