Our Mission

Critical Making adds scientific insights into the potential of the maker movement. We focus on critical and socially responsible making, and show how these communities can offer new opportunities for young makers of all genders to contribute to an open society via open source innovation. 

Consortium Partners

Critical Making is a research project which has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020. The consortium consists of five partners.

The Centre for Social Innovation (ZSI) is a trans-disciplinary social science non-profit research institute in the common public interest. Its headquarters is located in Vienna, Austria. ZSI employs around 60 persons, most of them researchers from different disciplinary backgrounds. The ZSI’s core competencies comprise social-scientific S&T policy studies, patterns of techno globalisation, participatory techniques and models of stakeholder inclusion, etc. It is involved in several projects related to RRI (Responsible Research and Innovation) and socio-technical innovations. Their activities are embedded in the context of open science and open innovation, such as those in the maker community, Citizen Science, the integration of information and communication technologies in learning processes, technology assessment, citizen engagement processes, etc.

Global Innovation Gathering (GIG) is a vibrant, diverse community of innovation hubs, makerspaces, hackerspaces and other grassroots innovation community spaces and initiatives as well as individual innovators, makers, technologists and changemakers. GIG is pursuing a new vision for global cooperation based on equality, openness and sharing. We aim to enable more diversity in the production of technology, and global innovation processes and support open and sustainable solutions developed by grassroots innovators.

VTT is a visionary research, development and innovation organization that drives sustainable growth, tackling the biggest global challenges and turning them into growth opportunities. VTT aims at understanding customers and society’s needs and opportunities by working in a challenge-driven way. VTT co-develops impactful solutions to match these needs. VTT is part of Finland’s innovation system and operates under the mandate of the Ministry of Employment and the Economy.

Technische Universität Berlin, the internationally renowned university, is located in Germany’s capital city at the heart of Europe. Our academic activities are focused on achieving sharply-defined goals: building a distinctive profile for our university, ensuring exceptional performance in research and teaching, providing our graduates with excellent qualifications and a modern approach to university administration.

Wikifactory is the world’s first social product development platform. Focused on the needs of digital fabrication projects, Wikifactory adapts proven agile development tools from the world of open source software to the needs of product development.

Advisory Board

Members of the Critical Making Advisory Board:

• Ingeborg Meijer, University of Leiden, Netherlands
• Niels Meijlgaard, Aarhus University, Denmark
• Maximilian Voigt, German Association of Makerspaces, Germany
• Emad Yaghmaei, TU Delft, Netherlands
• Stephanie Wuschitz, Mz Baltazar’s Laboratory, Vienna, Austria
• Hannah Perner-Wilson, University of Performing Arts Ernst Busch, Berlin, Germany
• Alessandra Schmidt, Make Works, IAAC Fablab Barcelona, Spain
• Thomas Hervé Mboa Nkoudou, Open Bioeconomy Lab, Cameroon
• Garnet Hertz, Canada Research Chair in Design and Media Arts, and is Associate Professor of Design at Emily Carr University