Public engagement in critical making - A feminist perspective on materiality of living

Abstract: This thesis sets out to explore critical making practices within a makerspace, Sliperiet, in Umeå. Public engagements in the makerspace increases the possibilities for everyday citizens as well as particular interest groups and stakeholders to become involved in designing. The +Project in Sliperiet became the case study for this thesis, and feminist theories framework was used for analysis. This thesis explores different strategies to support publics in critical making practices. The results show that critical making practices are hard to motivate sometimes. Therefore, the process of engaging publics needs to strike a theme that is intellectually intriguing or interesting for the participants, in order to ensure involvement and active participation. Moreover, to adopt critical making, there is a need of having a clear structure, instructions, and support for the workshops. This thesis also extends the concept of materiality of interaction to materiality of living by analyzing people’s every day interaction.