Workshops to discuss Guidelines of inclusive making

Introduction

In the realm of the Critical Making project we have been collaborating with makers around the world. Together, we have tried to find strategies for making to become more gender diverse and inclusive.

The guideline for inclusive making, we would like you to focus your feedback on, was mainly formulated from a European perspective in the context of Maker Spaces in Berlin. We are aware that there are many possible ways to support gender inclusiveness in making and that the specific ways also need to be context-sensitive in order to be useful. This is why we highly appreciate your feedback and insights.

We are grateful to receive your written feedback by 10.05.2023 and to have a focus group interview the week after (time and date to be confirmed).

Thank you for your work and effort! Your support is highly valuable to us!

Key Materials for Discussion

Guideline for inclusive making – this guideline summarises key concepts and points a Maker Space can reflect on and change for becoming more inclusive. One printable version is attached to your confirmation email. The online version can be found here.

(Background paper: Introduction to inclusive making – this introduction explains some key concepts of inclusive making and critical making. It might be useful to have a look at the introduction, for discussing the guideline for inclusive making in detail. A printable version is attached to your confirmation email. An online version can be found here.)

Steps ahead

Have a look at the guideline for inclusive making

Please read through the guideline
Please take notes about your impressions.
- Do you find it useful? Is something really important missing? Has it sparked a new thought?

Organise a workshop

Select a time and place for a workshop – possibly this can happen in your Maker Space.
Invite at least 3 members of your community to discuss the materials with you. The more, the merrier! Ideally, different perspectives are present at the workshop.
- Share the guideline with your invited participants (and possibly also all other members of your makerspace). Ask your invited participants to read the guidelines prior to the workshop.
- In case your participants are not familiar with terms of gender and inclusion, you can also invite them to have a look at the short introduction to inclusive making.
Arrange the agenda – we have prepared one for you, that you can find below. Feel free to adapt it to your needs, but please make sure that the discussion relates to our key questions, you can find in our feedback sheet.
Prepare the materials for the workshop, such as pen and paper for documentation and print-outs of the guideline for the participants.
Select the roles – ideally, there is one person moderating the workshop and another person taking notes during the workshop.

Discuss the materials in the workshop

Following the agenda, please discuss the materials with the group
Take notes of what is said
Please make sure to take a few pictures to share with us (with consent of your participants)

Let us know about your feedback

Please write down the most important points of your discussion in our feedback sheet and keep your notes for the upcoming focus group interview. Please make a copy of this version and save it under a new name -> then send us the link to this new file.
Share your filled feedback sheet with us by 10.05.2023.
Join the focus group interview in May and discuss your results with us and others, who can share the experiences from their Maker Spaces. (The date and time for the focus group will be commonly agreed on and communicated as soon as it is known.)

Send us your invoice

Please send us your invoice of €500 for your efforts to: fabian@zsi.at
You can use the template provided by us to claim the invoice, but also your templates work for us, as long as they include the same information as our template.

Potential Agenda

Timing	Topic	Method	Material
15 minutes	Collect Topics to discuss	Someone at the door to welcome. (Optional, if workshop participants do not know each other: tell people how to write the name tags, add their name to the attendance list)	Optional: empty name tags, which can be filled with the name and pronouns of a person & a pen to write with
20 minutes	Check-In	The lead facilitator introduces themselves and the purpose of the workshop (why are we here?) Then the facilitator asks everyone to share: – Their name + internal weather (an icebreaker way to ask how you are. The weather is used as a way to describe the person’s mood “ I feel sunny or like a storm, or cloudy, etc.) – What do they want to get out of this workshop?	Pen & paper (ideally flipchart or board everyone can see) or laptop to write along what is said.
15 minutes	Collect Topics to discuss	Print-outs of the guidelines are distributed to each participant. Each person silently reflects for 10 minutes and notes down on post-its/small paper: – What did you find most useful / What are the best aspects? – What needs to be improved? – Do you have any other suggestions or recommendations from good practices you would like to share?	A print-out of the guidelines for every participant Post-its/small paper Pens
10 minutes	Optional: Break!	Optional: Have a short break 🙂
60 minutes	In depth discussion of materials	Now go through the three questions above one by one. Ask participants to share their notes: – Every participant takes their post-its, – shortly introduces to the group what is noted on the post-its and – sticks them to the flip-chart. When all post-its relating to one question are collected the facilitator starts to cluster the contributions together with participants, e.g.putting related post-its next to each other, and collects any additional ideas and comments made.	Document the discussion and the group decisions
10 minutes	Summary, prioritisat ion	Seek consensus on the most important points of the discussion with the group. Highlight 3 to 5 main key takeaways from the conversation to be shared with the Critical Making team.	Write down the most important points as decided by the group
10 minutes	Closing	3 word feedback in a round – every person says about 3 words of how they perceived the workshop Thank everyone for coming and their time!	Take notes about what was said

Additional Material of the Project:

In case you are interested, here you can find additional materials produced in the Critical Making project related to gender and inclusive making:

Inspirational Stories – the stories are based on interviews with inspiring persons around the world telling their stories how they become part of the maker movement. You can find them here.

Stories about CriticalMaking activities – the stories summarize various activities that happened in the project including lessons learned for caretaker inclusive making, workshops organised in South Sudan and Cameroon as well as the inspirational stories. You can find them here.