A Series of Fortunate Accidents: Lessons Learned When Things Go Sideways in Making Projects with Children

Abstract

Recently, there has been a large body of research exploring the possibilities of digital fabrication and making in school context. To truly embrace the spirit of equity and democracy so essential to the maker movement, more research is needed concerning how these activities can be used to empower marginalized and at-risk groups. In this paper, we introduce preliminary insights from Make4Change project, that aims to strengthen the social inclusion and employability of unemployed, young people and immigrants outside the labor market through digital fabrication and making. We use the criteria for empowerment of participants as a tool to reflect the planning, organization, and execution of learning activities and on improving our process moving forward. We believe that insights from Make4Change will be useful to practitioners and researchers looking to empower underrepresented, marginal, or at-risk populations through making.CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered Computing • Human computer interaction (HCI) • Empirical studies in HCI