• Design Driven Strategies for Manufacture 4.0 and Social Innovation. Florence (Italy)
• Open Design and Manufacturing through event-based learning. Dabrowa Gornicza and Lodz (Poland)
• Citizens Centered Innovation and Design for Open and Distributed Manufacture. London (UK)
• Prototyping Artisan – A Designer who makes. Bilbao (Spain)

Introduction to the workshops

The report contains a presentation of the four training activities implemented by the OD&M Alliance between October 2018 and June 2019, respectively in Italy, UK, Spain and Poland.

The trainings have been developed, in the first instance, on the basis of the insights gathered through the exploratory study implemented by the Alliance over the course of 2017 . The study was aimed at achieving in depth understanding of the types of collaborations that Universities, communities of makers and firms across Europe and China are currently developing around the making culture and, by extension, open design and manufacturing. Besides, the study was aimed at gathering insights about possible innovations in higher education – including curricula and teaching and learning methods – that would lead to better and increased cross-sectoral synergies in the emerging OD&M field.

The training projects have been further advanced through a round of co-design implemented first at the international level (see London Co-design workshop Report available at www.odmplatform.eu), and then at the local levels of the four EU nodes, with the involvement of local stakeholders and external experts.

These co-design activities, which included workshops, desk research and stakeholder consultation, have led to the identification of key characteristics of each training, in terms of strategic positioning, target-group(s), types of learning challenges, learning outcomes and assessment and validation of competencies. More broadly, the trainings have been operating as testbeds for prototyping possible innovations within the higher education institutions involved, in order to explore the application of open design & manufacturing as a means to drive new cross-sectoral alliances, as well as to boost new knowledge and skills via new teaching and learning methods.

The document contains a summary of the activities implemented, methodology applied, learning challenges explored in each node and prototypes realized. More qualitative results and outcomes stemming from the training are instead documented in the final impact report (D5.3).

OD&M Team, June 2019

Download the report here: OD&M Training and Activities

Lead image: WeMake Open Design by wemake_cc

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Makers and the related  activities are more often observed in vibrant cities, encapsulating diverse communities of designers, engineers and innovators. They flourish around luscious spaces and events, where talent and ideas are abound. Pioneer cities, like Barcelona, Madrid, London, Copenhagen and Amsterdam, have gradually evolved to prominent centres of the maker culture.

But what about places where these elements are less eminent? It is often said that some of the most advanced technologies are needed in the least developed places. And here the word “technology” conveys a broader meaning than mere technical solutions and enhancements of human capacities. Etymologically, technology derives from the ancient Greek words “techne”, i.e. art or craft, and “logos”, which refers to a form of systematic treatment. In this sense, technology is practically inseparable from the human elements of craftsmanship, ingenuity and knowledge. Elements that are as embedded in our very existence, as the practice of sharing with our neighbours. Especially in situations of physical shortage and scantness, solidarity and cooperation are the most effective survival strategies.

This is the case of a small mountainous village in North-Western Greece called Kalentzi. It is situated in the village cluster of Tzoumerka, a place abundant in natural and cultural wealth, yet scarce in the economic means of welfare. The local population mostly depends on low-intensity and small-scale activities combining arboreal cultivation, husbandry and beekeeping. Investment was never overflowing in the region, let alone in today’s Greek economy in life support.

A local community of farmers assembled around a practical problem: finding appropriate tools for their everyday activities. Established market channels mostly provide with tools and machinery that are apt for the flatlands. Acquisition and maintenance costs are unsustainably high, while people often have to adapt their techniques to the logic of the machines. They begun with simple meetups where they created a favourable environment to share, reflect and ideate on their common challenges and aspirations, facilitated by a group of researchers from the P2P Lab, a local research collective focused on the commons.

Soon the discussion was already saturated and they started building together a tool for hammering fencing-poles into the ground. Several tools and methods have been used for this task for ages, though each one with its associated difficulties and dangers. Some farmers climb on ladders to hammer the poles, while others use barrels. However, it’s the combined effort of hammering while maintaining one’s balance that is particularly challenging, whereas there are often two people required for the job.

Interesting ideas were already in place to solve this problem. Designs were drafted on a flipchart with a couple of markers and the ones more available brought some of their own tools, like a cut saw and an electric welder, to build a prototype.

That has been the birth of Tzoumakers: a community-driven agricultural makerspace in Tzoumerka, Greece. Tzoumakers is more than an unfortunate wordplay of “Tzoumerka” and the maker culture; it is about a unique confluence of the groundbreaking elements of the latter, with the rich traditional heritage of the former. A distinctive synthesis that transcends both into a notion that seeks to create solutions that are on-demand and locally embedded, yet conceived and shareable on a global cognitive level.

It is important to emphasise that Tzoumakers is not a place that develops new tools ‘in house’. Rather it builds upon the individual ingenuity of its community and remains open for everyone to participate in this process. Through collective work, field testing and representation new tools may be released and further shared to benefit others with similar problems. Many of the necessary innovations are already there; the role of Tzoumakers is to collect, formalize and disseminate them.

But it’s also important to understand that Tzoumakers, much like its tools and solutions, cannot provide ready-made blueprints for solutions to be simply copy-pasted elsewhere. The same applies to the projects that have been its inspiration, such as L’ Atelier Paysan and Farm Hack, which cannot convey one unified cosmopolitan vision for the agricultural sector. The same process of connection, collaboration and reflection has to be followed on every different context, whether rich or poor, vibrant or desolate, in abundance or scarcity. But it is this combination of human creativity, craftsmanship, meaningful work and sharing that arguably embodies a true, pervasive and “cosmolocal” spirit for the maker culture.

Notes:

Tzoumakers and the P2P Lab are supported by the project “Phygital: Catalysing innovation and entrepreneurship unlocking the potential of emerging production and business models”, implemented under the Transnational Cooperation Programme Interreg V-B “Balkan – Mediterranean 2014-2020”, co-funded by the European Union and the National Funds of the participating countries.

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Its main objectives are to foster the development and recognition of emerging European Maker and Design culture by supporting makers, their mobility and circulation of their work, providing them with international opportunities and highlighting the most outstanding talent; improve the connections among makers, designers and the market, providing thus tools, strategies, guides, contents, education, events, networks in order to enable them to commercialize their creations; stimulate and develop a genuine Europe-wide programming of Maker activities in order to contribute to the development of a vibrant and diverse European Maker and Design culture that can be experienced by a broad range of audience across Europe and beyond as well as to enhance the creation of work and of financially sustainable business activities by makers and designers.

P2P Lab has the pleasure to collaborate with DDMP by organising a cultiMake event concerning the crowdsourcing of open source agricultural solutions.

Partners: Institute of Advanced Architecture Catalonia (ES), Fab City Grand Paris (FR), Pakhuis de Zwijger (NL), HappyLab (AT), Polifactory – Politecnico di Milano (IT), Machines Room (UK), P2P Lab (EL), Republica (DE), Dansk Design Center (DK), Fab lab Berlin (DE), Fab Lab Budapest (HU), Innovation Center Iceland (IS), Foreningen Maker (DK).

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What’s To Catch the Rain all about?

To Catch the Rain is a book of inspiring stories of communities coming together to catch their own rain, with the nitty-gritty details so you can do it as well.

Community created rainwater projects from the US, Mexico, and Dominican Republic.

It is a book for people looking to build a better future together.

• Inspiring stories: Real life accounts of catching rain in communities.
• Technical details: Straightforward descriptions of rainwater system parts, replete with examples from existing systems (many from the systems described in the stories).
• Math and science: Easy-to-follow math that allows readers to simply size rainwater systems, including completed examples.

Example of the math showing how the average US home has over 33,000 gallons per year land on its roof.

Audience

This book is for everyone, and is especially written for:

• Community members: Get inspired and take action. Learn from others building their own systems around the world. We have already received requests and sent pre-releases to Kenya, Tanzania, India, Mexico, Nepal, Dominican Republic, and the US.
• Makers: Find the DIY details ready to be adapted to your local and global projects. See how other makers solved their problems.
• Teachers: Use this in your Middle School, High School, and University courses. Provides context for education and practical experience to back up math, science, and social curriculum. Includes problem-sets to reinforce the knowledge in the book.
• Students: Rejoice in strong practical reasons to be learning. The real stories bring the math and technical details to life. The custom diagrams and pictures deepen the learning.
• Practivistas: Expand the resilience and impact of the idea that, instead of telling people what not to do, we can build better systems that people want to do.
• People looking for inspiration and follow-through.

Rainwater catchment for gardens, edible landscaping, and emergency relief in California.

Where you come in

We need your help to bring this book to a reality. The writing of the book is done. Now we need money for design, layout, printing, distributing, and translating.  Which is why we are asking for your financial support to make it beautiful, more accessible, and less expensive!

The content has gone through multiple reviews, including academic peer reviews and by edits by friends, students, colleagues, and kind professionals. It is ready for the world!… once we raise the money and finish these last important components.

Click here to contribute to the crowdfund campaign

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There is an important role for international trade and global exchange of goods and services, but not when it comes to meeting basic regional needs. Wherever feasible we should meet our needs as locally or regionally as possible and restrict the global exchange of goods to those that cannot be produced in a particular place.

Open innovation and knowledge-sharing at a global scale will be an important part of the process of re-localizing production and some global companies are already beginning to explore how to reinvent themselves as facilitators of the shift towards ‘distributed manufacturing’ and ‘the circular economy’.

Since 2013, together with Forum for the Future, I have been involved in conceiving and implementing a long-range innovation project for the Belgian manufacturer of ecological cleaning products and detergents Ecover. The project uses the unique island conditions of Majorca as a test field to explore how a global company like Ecover can help to facilitate a shift towards localized production for localized consumption based on local material and energy resources and in collaboration with local business partners. In the process we studied the potential of the Majorcan bioeconomy to deliver — in a regenerative way — enough biological raw materials (from waste streams) to produce cleaning products for the local market.

The island is particularly dependent on imports of consumer products and food, due to the increased demand caused by 16 million tourist visits each year. While the long-term sustainability of such mass tourism is more than questionable, these visitor numbers provide the economic engine that can finance the transition towards local production, food and energy infrastructures.

Ecover and ‘Forum for the Future’ collaborated with an on-island network of multi- sector stakeholders to create a showcase that, if successful, could serve as a transferable example and a model for a region-focused shift towards a renewable energy and materials-based circular economy (see Glocal, 2015).

Slide from one of my presentations about the Mallorca Glocal project with Ecover and Forum for the Future

We learned some very important lessons. Simply embarking on the process of co-creating an inspirational experiment like this and involving diverse stakeholders in it contributed to the wider transformation towards a regenerative culture. The conversation about re-localizing production and consumption on Majorca has started.

The regional experiment aimed to take a step towards a circular economy based on re-regionalizing production and consumption. It was motivated less by the potential for short-term economic success and more by the power of experimentation as a way to make sure we are asking the right questions. It catalysed a local design conversation while Ecover explores how it could reinvent itself as a global knowledge and business partner with a wide network of regional collaborators enabling distributed manufacturing and promoting regional economic development.

The transformation of our systems of production and consumption is a creative design challenge that will require whole-systems thinking and transformative innovation at its very best. The resulting disruptive innovations will ultimately make the existing system obsolete.

We were effectively trying to redesign production and consumption of chemical products, creating a local product by trying to operate more like an ecosystem. In an ecosystem, materials are sourced locally and assembled in non-toxic processes based on renewable energies.

The promise of this regionalized production system is a more diverse regional economy that generates jobs, encourages efficient use of regional waste streams as resources of production, helps local farmers get a good price for the food and biomaterials they grow, creates resilience by increasing self-reliance, reduces dependence on expensive imports, and contributes to the effort to quickly reduce greenhouse gas emissions by reducing transportation of feedstock and finished products.

The first steps towards achieving this are already being explored in many industrial ecology projects around the world (see Chapter 6). Even if some of these current projects are hybrid systems that still rely on fossil energy and non-renewable material resources, they are achieving increases in material and energy efficiency by connecting previously separate industrial processes in ways that turn one industry’s waste (whether material streams or waste heat) into another industry’s resource of production. They are second horizon(H2) stepping-stones to renewable energy-powered regenerative systems.

Unleashing the full potential of such ecosystems of production and consumption based on integrative industrial design requires regional collaboration across all sectors and all industries. The synergies that can be generated when previously separate industries are linked through ecological design thinking are substantial.

The book Blue Economy summarizes a number of such ground-breaking design solutions that are being implemented or are in advanced stages of development (Pauli, 2010). It offers inspiration for green entrepreneurs to get involved in H2+ transformative innovation.

The overall shift is away from a fossil fuel-based industrial system with centralized production facilities that rely on bringing raw materials from all corners of the Earth only to then distribute the finished products globally again. This wasteful system is based on outdated industrial design solutions developed during the first industrial revolution where the economics of mass-manufacturing meant bigger was better, and cheap abundant fossil fuels and non-renewable materials were taken for granted.

Currently, the vast majority of our consumer products contain petroleum-based materials. During the first half of the 21st century we will witness the transformation of this global system of production. We will begin to co-create a material culture that relies on locally available materials, green (plant-based) chemistry and renewable energy sources for regional production and consumption.

Integrative design based on whole-systems thinking and the kind of nature-inspired design solutions explored in the next two chapters will help us create ‘elegant solutions predicated by the uniqueness of place’. This is how my mentor Professor John Todd, a pioneer in his field, defines ecological design. Such solutions are an elegant blend of the best of modern technology and a rediscovered sensitivity to place, culture and traditional wisdom. New technologies are opening up a 21st-century, design-led re-localization enabled by global resource-sharing and cooperation.

Distributed manufacturing is becoming a reality as new 3D printing technologies enabling additive manufacturing at a small scale are developing rapidly alongside revolutionary approaches to open innovation based on peer-to-peer collaboration, the spread of ‘Fab-labs’ and a new maker culture, breakthroughs in material science, as well as diverse bio-economy projects. Much work is still needed in the area of developing locally grown and regenerated feedstock for 3D printing technologies.

The Open Source Ecology project started by Marcin Jakubowski demonstrates how inventors and technologists are already collaborating globally to recreate regional means of production that are increasingly independent of the centralized mass-production systems of multinationals.

The project’s aim is to create the ‘Global Village Construction Set’, an open-source design and engineering library of detailed blueprints that will enable people with basic engineering and technical skills to create the 50 most important machines needed to build a sustainable civilization. We are beginning to ask:

How can we implement the global shift towards increased regional production for regional consumption?

How can we create effective systems of open-source innovation that enable people globally to share know-how and design innovations?

How can we ensure that re-regionalizing production and consumption will happen within the bioproductivity limits of each particular region, and strike a balance between growing food and growing industrial resources regionally?

How can we make 3D printing technologies sustainable by ensuring that they use locally produced, renewable and up-cyclable feedstock in environmentally benign ways, powered by decentralized renewable energy?

How can we use bio-refineries and advanced fermentation technologies to facilitate the shift from a fossil fuel-based organic chemistry to a solar- powered, plant-based and non-toxic chemistry in order to re-invent our material culture?

An early lesson we learnt in Majorca is that a successful bioeconomy requires widespread collaboration between sectors. Policy interventions are needed to regulate access to biological resources and their sustainable (regenerative) production and use. With limited bioproductive potential within a particular region, we must find ways to create ecosystems of collaboration that optimize the use of available resources.

Regenerative design solutions require whole-systems design conversations across all sectors of society. From these conversations a guiding vision will emerge. This vision can be made reality, one place at a time, by all of us. [At the time of writing, the Ecover Glocal project is not advancing, due to a lack of funding. It created a network of collaborators and planted a vision that is likely to be taken up again in the future.]

Image Source

[This is an excerpt from my book Designing Regenerative Cultures, published by Triarchy Press, 2016.]

Photo by POC21 – Proof of Concept

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Francesca Bria: Until today digital social innovation (DSI) has been mainly driven by grassroots social movements, hackers, geeks and civil society groups. Huge sums of public money have supported digital innovation in business, as well as in fields ranging from the military to espionage. But there has been very little systematic support for innovations that use digital technology to address social challenges.

We need bold thinking about the type of digital society we want. I think . It will be a hybrid between physical and digital, between representative and direct democracy. Cities will be the place to experiment, grow and scale bold policies related to DSI, such as basic income, data commons, and digital participation.

That is what we are doing in Barcelona where we have a Mayor, Ada Colau, that is a former social movement activist. Barcelona en comù and Podemos, the two new political movements that emerged from the 15M anti austerity social mobilisation in Spain, only use crowdfunding and organise their members through a collaborative platform that gathers policy input from thousands of citizens. It is the quality of the balance between top down and bottom up that will determine the success of the digital social transition.

The following are some of the questions that I see for the future of DSI:

1. THE TECH FUTURE OF DSI WILL DEPEND ON DATA COMMONS

AI and machine learning is determining the future of our economy, from driverless cars, to precision agriculture, deep learning in the healthcare sector, to energy transition. Companies like Google and Amazon are spending over $10billion on infrastructure every year and are grabbing a huge amount of data. However, this kind of massive transformation cannot be left to big tech companies alone.

I think the future of DSI will depend on being able to strike a New Deal on Data to make the most out of data, while guaranteeing data sovereignty & privacy. We need distributed infrastructures to share data, encryption for the people, and new ownership regimes such as data commons to preserve citizens digital rights.

One of the main tech challenges for DSI will be striking a deal between full privatization and public control; between extreme centralisation and extreme decentralised; between data commons and data markets; between black boxes and algorithmic transparency.

2. THE ECONOMIC FUTURE OF DSI WILL BE ABOUT THE INTRODUCTION OF BASIC INCOME & THE GROWTH OF PLATFORM COOPERATIVES

The “sharing economy” is here to stay! Introducing fair regulation and algorithmic transparency to regulate incumbents is necessary but not enough. We need to empower sharing economy alternatives such as platform cooperatives, the maker movement that is reinventing manufacturing, and Maker Cities where circular economy models can be experimented and scaled. That’s what we are doing in Barcelona.

But going beyond this, one of the main economic challenges for DSI in the next 10 years will be reinventing the notion of work in relation to the rapid automation of labour. Economists predict that 100million workers will be replaced by the robot economy. Rethinking our social security system through for instance the introduction of basic income schemes will be crucial and DSI can stimulate our imagination to experiment on the future of health, education, work, care, and even money.

3. DSI WILL ENABLE A GENUINELY DIRECT DEMOCRACY VS RIGHT WING POPULISM

Finally, the future of our digital society has to be built with the people! In particular with the young generations that are disenfranchised in this moment of crisis of trust in the political and financial system. We need to engage the young generation in politics through an open democratic process or right wing populisms will prevail, together with the spreading of Fake News. This may seem difficult when oversees we see institutional closure, intolerance, racism, but I think a genuinely participatory democracy is the only way to build a stronger and more just Digital society leveraging social innovation movements.

THE NEXT 10 YEARS OF DSI

To end, I would like to provide a pretty positive picture of where DSI will go in the next 10 years:

1. More and more cities and public institutions will introduce social, environmental, ethical, open and innovation clauses in public procurement enabling the integration of DSI in public service delivery

2. Digital participatory democracy with thousands of citizens involved in policy making will be the norm

3. Basic income schemes will be tested and successfully introduced

4. Data commons will make platform cooperatives a solid alternative to Uber & Airbnb

5. Every City will have Maker districts for the circular economy & produce energy and food locally, moving towards productive and sovereign Cities

Photo by ario_

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Abstract

“Peer production has emerged as a new and relevant way of organising the work of distributed and autonomous individuals in the production and distribution of digital content. Increasingly, the adoption of peer production is taking place not only in the development of digital and immaterial content, but also in the design, manufacturing and distribution of physical goods. Furthermore, Open Design and Open Hardware projects are developed, discussed, manufactured and distributed thanks to digital fabrication technologies, digital communication technologies, advanced funding initiatives (like crowdfunding platforms and hardware incubators) and globally integrated supply chains. This new systemic dimension of work is possible, among other factors, thanks to local facilities like Fab Labs, Makerspaces and Hackerspaces (that can be generally called Maker laboratories), where individuals can gather and form communities with other people, designing and manufacturing together. Generally, these people are referred to as Makers and, while their existence is still an emergent phenomenon, it is widely acknowledged that they could exemplify a new modality of work. We investigated the knowledge, values and working dimensions of Makers in Italy with the Makers’ Inquiry, a survey that focused on Makers, Indie Designers and managers of Maker laboratories. This research generated a first overview of the phenomenon in Italy, improving the knowledge of the profiles of Makers; an important step because Makers are usually defined in a very broad way. Furthermore, we investigated their profiles regarding their values and motivations, in order to understand how much Makers engage in peer production or in traditional businesses and whether their working condition is sustainable or not. Finally, we compared these profiles with data regarding traditional designers and businesses and the national context. Given the recent nature of the Maker movement, the focus of this article is on providing a first overview of the phenomenon in Italy with an exploratory analysis and with comparison with existing related literature or national data, rather than contextualising the Maker movement in sociological and political contributions. Far from happening in a void, Italian Makers have a strong relationship with their localities and established industry. Therefore, this is a recent evolution, where Makers work with a broader palette of projects and strategies: With both non-commercial and commercial activities, both peer production and traditional approaches. The activity of making is still a secondary working activity that partially covers the Makers’ income, who are mostly self-employed working at home, in a craft workshop or in a Fab Lab in self-funded or non-commercial initiatives, where technology is not the only critical issue. As a conclusion, we identified current patterns in the working condition of Italian Makers. The data gathered shows some interesting information that, however, could be applicable only to an Italian context. Nevertheless, the survey could be a starting point to compare the same phenomenon in different countries. Therefore, we released the survey files, software and data as open source in order to facilitate the adoption, modification, verification and replication of the survey.”

Conclusions

“We investigated the knowledge, values and working dimensions of Makers in Italy with the Makers’ Inquiry, a survey that focused on Makers as represented by Make Magazine, Independent Designers and managers of Maker Laboratories. This research generated a first overview of the phenomenon in Italy, identifying the profiles of such Makers; this is an important step because Makers are usually defined in a very broad way. Furthermore, we investigated their profiles regarding their values and motivations, in order to understand how much Makers engage in peer production or in traditional businesses, whether they work with open source and collaborative processes or individually, whether their communities have a strong role in their work or they are just a dimension with limited relevance. We then investigated their emerging business and working conditions. Finally, we compared the gathered data with data regarding traditional designers, businesses and the national context. Given the recent nature of the Maker movement, the focus of this article is on providing a first overview of the phenomenon in Italy with an exploratory analysis and with comparison with existing related literature or national data, rather than contextualising the Maker movement in sociological and political terms. Such contextualisations could be a further step for future research.

Far from happening in a void and being a completely unexpected revolution, Italian Makers have a strong relationship with their localities and established industry. The majority of Italian Makers has been involved in making activities for the past five years; therefore, this is a recent evolution, where Makers work with a broader palette of projects and strategies: with both non-commercial and commercial activities, and both peer production and traditional approaches. The activity of making is still a secondary working activity that partially covers the Makers’ income, who are mostly self-employed working at home, in a craft workshop or in a Fab Lab in self-funded or non-commercial initiatives, where technology is not the only critical issue. After analysing the data from the Makers’ Inquiry, we can affirm that Italian Makers have an interest towards collaboration and peer production and, in particular, that the will to collaborate mostly derives from the necessity of technological skills and capabilities acquisition but it is also an issue that is informally considered important. A notable interest towards openness is also present but we could not find any useful information that could have helped us in differentiating the Maker approach to openness when it comes to digital (i.e., open software) and physical (i.e., open hardware) content. Italian Makers associate making with openness but not as its main trait, but their practice has a stronger relationship with openness than what Makers are aware of. Participation in communities is relevant, but there is more collaboration in Maker Laboratories than in online communities. Italian Makers do practice Open Design, but the gathered data suggests that peer production for physical goods in the context of Makers is still limited (in approach and scale of production), at an early stage, more linked to practice than ideology. As found in the existing literature about peer production with physical goods, there is a need for more practice and research in order to close the gap with peer production of digital content. The working conditions of Italian Makers is emergent and still not completely economically sustainable, but more similar to a job than to a hobby. Even if only a part of their income comes from making and making is mostly a secondary activity (and there is no official legal status for Makers in Italy), they are more interested in making as a job than as a hobby and their age falls in the working-age range.

The data gathered shows some interesting information that, however could be applicable only to an Italian context. Nevertheless, the survey could be a starting point to compare the same phenomenon in different countries. Therefore, on makersinquiry.org we released the survey files, software and data as open source in order to facilitate the adoption, modification, verification and replication of the survey. The replication of such a survey in more countries could both lead to an improvement to the survey, tools and approach and a further example of peer production, in the context of Design research. The connections among Makers, Maker Laboratories, peer production and work are growing, but further research is needed on the topics of peer production with physical goods and on the topic of policies that could improve the working condition of Makers in order to be more sustainable. Some contributions suggested that consumer innovation already plays a huge role in society, and we think that the Maker movement could be integrated with such phenomenon, as both are based on product hacking by everyday citizens. If this integration takes place and has a relevant dimension, it would therefore be important to understand how to make making activities more sustainable. We suggest that future research should gather more data and compare the available data with theoretical contributions about working conditions of especially self-employed workers and non-profit organisations, with the aim of elaborating policies that recognise and support the Maker movement and its impact on society and economy. Furthermore, we suggest to adopt alternative approaches for studying this topic, extending this research from a survey to other perspectives, since one approach alone cannot understand the complexity of the phenomena.”

Find the full article here.

Photo by kevin dooley

Photo by Josh Kopel

The post Essay of the Day: Makers as a New Work Condition between Self-employment and Community Peer Production appeared first on P2P Foundation.

This is an excerpt from the upcoming book Funding the Cooperative City: Community finance and the economy of civic spaces.

In the past decade, with the economic crisis and the transformation of welfare societies, NGOs, community organisations and civic developers – City Makers – established some of the most important services and spaces in formerly vacant buildings, underused areas and neglected neighbourhoods. Consolidating their presence in the regenerated spaces, these initiatives are increasingly looking into the power of the local community, the dispersed crowd and new financial actors to invest in their activities.

Two years ago, the cultural centre La Casa Invisible collected over 20.000 euros for the partial renovation of the building including the installation of fire doors and electric equipments to assure the safety of their revitalized 19th century building in the centre of Málaga. A few months later, East London’s Shuffle Festival, operating in a cemetery park at Mile End, collected 60.000 pounds for the renovation and community use of The Lodge, an abandoned building at the corner of the cemetery. In order to implement their campaigns, both initiatives used the online platforms Goteo and Spacehive that specialise in the financing of specific community projects. The fact that many of the hundreds of projects supported by civic crowdfunding platforms are community spaces, underlines two phenomena: the void left behind by a state that gradually withdrew from certain community services, and the urban impact of community capital created through the aggregation of individual resources.

The question if community capital can really cure the voids left behind by the welfare state has generated fierce debates in the past years. This discussion was partly launched by Brickstarter, the beta platform specialised in architectural crowdfunding, when it introduced to the public the idea of crowdfunded urban infrastructures. Those who opposed Brickstarter, did in fact protest against the Conservative agenda of the “Big Society”, the downsizing of welfare society and the “double taxation” of citizens: “Why should we spend on public services when our taxes should pay for them?”

Nevertheless, in the course of the economic crisis, many European cities witnessed the emergence of a parallel welfare infrastructure: the volunteer-run hospitals and social kitchens in Athens, the occupied schools, gyms and theatres of Rome or the community-run public squares of Madrid are only a few examples of this phenomenon. European municipalities responded to this challenge in a variety of ways. Some cities like Athens began to examine how to adjust their regulations to enable the functioning of community organisations, others created new legal frameworks to share public duties with community organisations in contractual ways, like Bologna with the Regulation of the Commons. In several other cities, administrations began experimenting with crowdfunding public infrastructures, like in Ghent or Rotterdam, where municipalities offer match-funding to support successful campaigns, or with participatory budgeting, like in Paris, Lisbon or Tartu. Yet other public administrations in the UK, the Netherlands or Austria invited the private sphere to invest in social services in the form of Social Impact Bonds, where the work of NGOs or social enterprises is pre-financed by private actors who are paid back with a return on their investment in case the evaluation of the delivered service is positive.

Largo Residencias, Lisbon. Photo (cc) Eutropian

Alternatively, some cities chose to support local economy and create more resilient neighbourhoods with self-sustaining social services through grant systems. The City of Lisbon, for instance, after identifying a number of “priority neighbourhoods” that need specific investments to help social inclusion and ameliorate local employment opportunities, launched the BIP/ZIP program that grants selected civic initiatives with up to 40.000 euros. The granted projects, chosen through an open call, have to prove their economic sustainability and have to spend the full amount in one year. The BIP/ZIP project, operating since 2010, gave birth to a number of self-sustaining civic initiatives, including social kitchens that offer affordable food and employment for locals or cooperative hotels that use their income from tourism to support social and cultural projects. In 2015 the experience of the BIP/ZIP matured in a Community-Led Local Development Network, as identified by the European Union’s Cohesion Policy 2014-2020, which will grant the network access to part of the Structural Funds of the City of Lisbon. The CLLD is a unique framework for the democratic distribution of public funds: it foresees the management of the funding to be shared between administration, private and civic partners, with none of them having the majority of shares and votes.

While, as the previous cases demonstrate, the public sector plays an important role in strengthening civil society in some European cities, many others witnessed the emergence of new welfare services provided by the civic economy completely outside or without any help by the public sector. In some occasions, community contribution appears in the form of philanthropist donation to support the construction, renovation or acquisition of playgrounds, parks, stores, pubs or community spaces. In others, community members act as creditors or investors in an initiative that needs capital, in exchange for interest, shares or the community ownership of local assets, for instance, shops in economically challenged neighbourhoods. Crowdfunding platforms also help coordinating these processes: the French Bulb in Town platform, specialized in community investment, gathered over 1 million euros for the construction of a small hydroelectric plant in Ariège that brings investors a return of 7% per year.

ExRotaprint, Berlin. Photo (cc) Eutropian

Besides aggregating resources from individuals to support particular cases, community infrastructure projects are also helped by ethical investors. When two artists mobilised their fellow tenants to save the listed 10.000 m2 Rotaprint in the Berlin district of Wedding, they invited several organisations working on moving properties off the speculation market and eliminating the debts attached to land, to help them buy the buildings. While the complex was bought and is renovated with the help of an affordable loan by the CoOpera pension fund, the land was bought by the Edith Maryon and Trias Foundations and is rented (with a long-term lease, a “heritable building right”) to ExRotaprint, a non-profit company, making it impossible to resell the shared property. With its sustainable cooperative ownership model, ExRotaprint provides affordable working space for manufacturers as well as social and cultural initiatives whose rents cover the loans and the land’s rental fee.

Creating community ownership over local assets and keeping profits benefit local residents and services is a crucial component of resilient neighbourhoods. Challenging the concept of value and money, many local communities began to experiment with complementary currencies like the Brixton or Bristol Pounds. Specific organisational forms like Community Land Trusts or cooperatives have been instrumental in helping residents create inclusive economic ecosystems and sustainable development models.

Homebaked, Liverpool. Photo (cc) Eutropian

In Liverpool’s Anfield neighbourhood, a community bakery is the symbol of economic empowerment: renovated and run by the Homebaked Community Land Trust established in April 2012, the bakery – initially backed by the Liverpool Biennale – offers employment opportunities for locals, and it is the catalyst of local commerce and the centre of an affordable housing project that is developed in the adjacent parcels. Similarly, a few kilometres east, local residents established another CLT to save the Toxteth neighborhood from demolition. The Granby Four Streets Community Land Trust, with the help of social investors and a young collective of architects (winning the prestigious Turner prize), organised a scheme that includes affordable housing, community-run public facilities and shops.

The economic self-determination of a community has been explored at the scale of an entire neighbourhood by the Afrikaanderwijk Cooperative in Southern Rotterdam. The cooperative is an umbrella organisation that connects workspaces with shopkeepers, local makers, social foundations, and the local food market: they have developed an energy collective in cooperation with an energy supplier that realises substantial savings for businesses in the neighbourhood; a cleaning service that ensures that cleaning work is commissioned locally; and a food delivery service for elderly people in the neighbourhood.

With community organisations and City Makers acquiring significant skills to manage welfare services, urban infrastructures and inclusive urban development processes, it is time for their recognition by established actors in the public and private sectors. The EU’s Urban Agenda, developing guidelines for a more sustainable and inclusive development of European cities, can be a catalyst of this recognition: it can prompt the creation of new instruments and policies to enable such community-led initiatives. While the Cohesion Policy 2014-2020 has developed the CLLD framework, not many Member States chose to use this instrument. The Urban Agenda could therefore envision the adoption of more methods to be experimented by City Administrations, to allow for a more sustainable and inclusive allocation of resources. Whether through matchfunding, grant systems, or simply removing the legal barriers of cooperatives, land trusts and community investment, municipalities could join the civil society in developing a more resilient civic economy with accessible jobs, affordable housing, clean energy, and social integration.

Lead image from homebaked.org, Liverpool UK. All other images from Eutropian.

The post Community Capital in Action: New Financial Models for Resilient Cities appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Around the world, a new economy is being shaped by a “leave things better” story about the meaning of progress and development. In a million projects, people are growing food, restoring soils and rivers, designing homes, generating energy,  journeying, caring for each other, and learning, in new ways.

These activities are incredibly diverse, but a green thread connects them: the regeneration of local living economies. Growth, in this story, takes on a new meaning as the improved health of soils, rivers, plants, animals – and people. Production is re-imagined as a source of equipment for the local system: from greenhouses and water tanks, to solar panels and mesh networks.

At the same time, new tools and business models are transforming relationships between makers and users: Sharing and Peer-to-Peer; Community Ownership; Platform Co-ops; Fair Trade; The Maker Movement; Civic Ecology; Circular Economy; Food and Fibersheds; Transition Towns; Bioregions.

Traditional craft communities, which so often embody healthy relationships between people, place, and living systems, can be important partners for learning and innovation in this new economy. What kinds of relationship, in this context, are most promising?

Maker economies

The rapid emergence of maker spaces, distributed manufacturing, new distribution channels, and disruptive business models, is blurring the distinction between developed and undeveloped, ‘them’ and ‘us’.

Craft producers in the South are just as much actors in a making economy as are the Fab Labs, makerspaces and microfactories that are blooming in the North.

The rediscovery of rust-belt production resources – “tractor factories”  as they call them in Bilbao – is further broadening the range of options for local production. In the forgotten industrial zones of many rustbelt cities, hundreds of local factories, workshops and makers are hidden away, and just about hanging on – but still viable.

The MakeWorks ‘factory finding’ platform launched in Scotland (see above) is a great example; their platform is now starting up in Bristol and Birmingham, too. Another great example, Farm Hack (see below) was born in the US but has now been launched in Scotland, too.

Digital platforms are a means to an end in this context. They make it easier for creative professionals to source local fabricators, material suppliers and open-access workshop facilities.

Documenting these resources is a creative activity in itself. It involves extensive research, mapping, filming and photography of factories, makers and manufacturers.

A number of web-based platforms have emerged as an online marketplace for makers — including OpenDesk, Etsy, Shapeways, Ponoko, Quirky, Kickstarter, and The Grommet.

But according to Will Holman, the economics of making things in a makerspace, and selling them through web-based platforms, are as tough for a designer selling on Etsy as its is for an artisan in Thailand. Most makers in the the US online marketplace earn less than the U.S. median wage.

A purely transactional maker economy, based only on selling things, is unlikely to be sustainable in the longer term.

If it’s just about the thing,
someone will soon find a way to source a similar thing,
but cheaper.

Rather than focus only on selling products as the core measure of progress, it makes more sense to focus on the resources and connections needed for a regional economy to thrive.

Foodsheds



In agriculture,  the healthiest food  systems and landscapes have been created, shaped and maintained by generations of farmers and herders building on local knowledge and experience. Artisan traditions that embody healthy relationships between people, place, and living systems, can therefore be our teachers.

So-called extension services in which farmers—often women— teach other about about agroecological practices are more developed in the south than in the city-dwelling north. In large areas of Asia, farmers are able to join farmer field schools, a group-based learning process that enables farmer-to-farmer instruction.

The opportunity here is to accelerate learning among growers groups whose  expertise and resources, when pooled,  can deliver a lot of the value currently added by today’s cost-adding layers of intermediaries. Of particular importance are alternative trade networks and the Community Agroecology Network.

Fibersheds

Networked actions at a bioregional scale are also emerging in the form of Fibersheds

. The fibershed model integrates all the activities involved in growing, making and using fibre within a soil-friendly, climate-beneficial fibre system.

Fibersheds are organised at the scale of a bioregion. Each region’s shepherds and farmers, producers, shearers, artisans, designers, knitters, fiber entrepreneurs, and clothes-wearing citizens, discuss what practical steps are needed to bring ‘farm-fresh’ clothing to their situation.

As shared production facillties and network coordination improve, small fibersheds are beginning to link together in pan-regional networks to share knowledge and facilities in ways that improve supply.

Poor-To-Poor Energy

Rural, artisan and cash-poor communities in cities are highly innovative, too, in obtaining energy for daily life necessities. We have much to learn from the ways these communities procure, deploy and share affordable, general-purpose, low-tech tools and equipment.

The North can help amplify this capability. Open-source platforms that enable distributed, peer-to-peer energy production, and local area networks, can  enable energy and value flows from poor-to-poor. New coop models make it easier for individual energy producers – at a household or community scale – to pool resources to meet local needs.

In Australia, for example, whose west coast residents see 300 days of sunshine per year, citizens trade directly with the people around them rather than sell excess energy back to the power company.  In a project inspired by Brooklyn Microgrid, energy meters in each participating household are fitted with Raspberry Pi mini-computers to track their energy usage. Homeowners decide to whom and for how much to sell their excess renewable energy. A blockchain ledger keeps track of transactions.

In the Brooklyn Microgrid (above) homeowners decide to whom and for how much to sell their excess renewable energy. The model has the potential to be adapted in poor-to-poor communities everywhere.

The design tasks here are not just about discrete bits of equipment, such as solar panels, or water pumps. Bottom line: resilience is not primarily about products. An entrepreneur who understands this, Paul Polak, reckons the design and technology of a device, such as a pump, is not much more than ten percent of the complete solution. The other ninety percent involves distribution, training, maintenance and service arrangements, partnership and business models. These, too, have to be co-designed.

Solidarity

The ‘gig economy’ and the ‘precariat’ may be uncomfortable novelties for people in the North – but for eighty percent of the world’s population they are the old normal. As welfare and solidarity innovators, we have much to learn from different times as well as from different places.

For most of human history, people have met daily life needs through networks of reciprocity and gifts. Communities have survived, and often prospered, thanks to social systems based on kinship, sharing, and myriad ways to share commonly-held resources. Work has been done for generations without being packaged as permanent jobs.

Bicycle-based wool seller in India – one of many examples of India’s dynamic economy of informal two-wheeled traders. For more examples see velowala.org )

Many historic practices are being reinvented in megacities across the global south. Informal settlements are filled with pop-up retail, street traders, guerilla gardening, and informal parks. In the world’s refugee camps, too, myriad micro-economies are constantly evolving in which in which people share energy, materials, time, skill, software, space, or food.

What precarious or informal workers most need but usually lack, is the capacity to plan ahead rather than be perpetually at the mercy of fickle seasons, or regulations. Liquidity – money – is always an issue. So, too, is the need for insurance against unforseen events. These needs, too, are beginning to met by next-generation ways to mutualize risk among trusted networks.



Money will not disappear as this new economy unfolds – but it will be only part of the picture., and there will be more than one variety. Trust between people, shared ownership, and networked models of care, depend more on social energy, and trust, than on fixed assets and real estate. There’s an emphasis on collaboration and sharing; on person-to-person interactions; on the adaptation and re-use of materials and buildings.

Bioregions



This mulitude of bottom-up new project seedlings is cheering – but something more is needed if the whole is to be more than the sum of its parts. A compelling story, and a shared purpose, are needed that diverse actors can relate to, and support, whatever their other differences.

A strong candidate for that connective idea is the bioregion. A bioregion re-connects us with living systems, and each other, through the unique places where we live. It acknowledges that we live among watersheds, foodsheds, fibersheds, and food systems – not just in cities, towns, or ‘the countryside’.
Growth, in a bioregion is redefined as improvements to the health and carrying capacity of the land, and the resilience of communities. Its core value is stewardship, not extraction.

Bioregions can be what Noble Laureate Ilya Prigogine described as “small islands of coherence” that,  in a sea of chaos,  that have the capacity to “shift the entire system to a higher order”.

Cooperation Platforms

Traditional does not mean static. Exciting opportunity for innovation lie in combining the knowledge systems, tools, and cultural assets of South and North into forms of finance, law, policy, and culture.
Relocalising at the scale of a bioregion does not mean the end of trade and exchange. On the contrary, there are numerous ways to share ideas and tools for food, energy fibre production in loose associations – think Hanseatic League of Bioregions. The geographical rule is that light things – bits, information, shared/open source design may well travel, but heavy things (atoms, the physical, manufacturing) stay local.

Platform cooperatives have been heralded as an alternative to platforms like Uber which exploit and disempower workers. But platform coops have a broader potential, too, as the infrastructure new alliances between cities, citizens and public utilities working together on water supply, waste disposal, and energy provision.

Platform coops cannot be downloaded in a simple click, like an app. A lot of work is needed to foster trust and clarity of purpose among members. But platform coops are not landing on empty ground. Millions of people are already collaborating to meet social needs in new ways. Their energy and creativity can be harnessed, right now, to to accelerate the spread of the platform coop approach.

end

Cross-posted from Thackara.com

The post Making as Reconnecting: Crafts In The Next Economy appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Today, I began creating my next life. I am leaving my present employer this year, in search of people who are working on issues I care about. It is not as if my co-workers don’t care. I work with social workers and community advocates. They genuinely want to make the world better for everyone.

But what would a better world for everyone look like? How would such a world function? Last year, a hundred altruistic people gathered to prototype a better world.

The result is a new nation – Hackistan.

Extracted from: http://hackistan.be/

Humanity is facing multiple challenges. Paradoxically, all resources which could help us overcome these challenges do exist. We are part of a new generation who believes that collaboration and co-creation can help solving those problems.

We believe in a new model for entrepreneurship where multidisciplinary collaboration, fairness and collective intelligence empower people and projects towards value and impact. Hackistan is a bet, an experiment with a strong purpose: a new land where talented professionals and impactful projects meet within a trust-based framework to build a new world.

Extracted from: https://www.facebook.com/palexandre.klein

In a trust-based framework, our goal is offer individuals and projects the best human, digital, financial and infrastructure existing resources – which are btw often underused-, within what we call a vertuous environment (mutualistic, redistributive).

This framework should allow these people and projects to connect more efficiently with resourceful partners (public/private actors, impact investors, Foundations, infrastructure managers).

Technically, we bootstrap this in Brussels by offering a working space, organizing open topic-wise events and private retreats for the collective members, as well as listening as much to the needs/obstacles/fears/ambitions from the people in the existing ecosystem. We aim at lifting up all fictive barriers (linguistic, disciplinary, scientific, industrial, individual) that brakes down the emergence pace of useful solutions.

Extracted from: http://hackistan.be/cities/

Since we are overwhelmed and extremely excited during this prototyping phase in Belgium, it is hard for us not to think about bringing Hackistan one step further. If you want to join and launch an antenna in your city, you know where to find us.

Extracted from: http://hackistan.be/getinvolved/

GET INVOLVED

YOU ARE A COMPANY

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