Maker-centricity and 'edge-places of creativity': CARE-full Making in a CARE-less World

Hackney, Fiona ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8489-4600, Figueiredo, Deirdre, Loveday, Mary, Onions, Laura and Rogers, Gavi (2022) Maker-centricity and 'edge-places of creativity': CARE-full Making in a CARE-less World. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 25 (6). pp. 1572-1596. ISSN 1367-5494

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Abstract

Susan Luckman (2012: 9–10), citing Katherine Gibson’s call for a return to ‘the grass-roots work of engaging the community and being open to developing new economies’, advocates a vision of creative industries that builds the affordances of ‘edge-places of creativity’. Luckman’s focus is non-urban localities. Her proposal, nevertheless, could equally apply to the amateur craft groups, community organisations, and independent businesspeople that the AHRC-funded projects Co-Producing CARE: Community Asset-based Research and Enterprise, and Maker-Centric: Building Place-based, Co-making Communities worked with in deprived inner-city areas in the British Midlands (Hackney et al, 2019). Both projects were undertaken with Craftspace and other stakeholder organisations, worked collaboratively with community groups, employed co-production processes, and combined hand-making with digital fabrication. The aim of each project was to prototype a method with communities that builds agencies (cultural, social, economic, skills-based) through making and could be applied by other groups. While the CARE method was concerned with the affordances of collaborative making, Maker-Centric looked at these through a heritage and placed-based lens. This article examines the potential for local, collaborative, purposeful, social making as an ‘edge-place’ activity for creative enterprise that is inclusive and supportive.