Images from 'In the Making'

A set of images generated as documents of the processes and products of 'In the making': a co-constructed mapping and feasibility study of digital fabrication labs and their potential to catalyse cultural change. ‘In the Making’ is an AHRC Connected Communities Innovation project (AH/M006026/1), which set out to explore the potential of digital fabrication practices to catalyse cultural change with and for disabled people. The project was co-constructed with people from the Greater Manchester area of the UK, who identified as disabled. The project team introduced digital fabrication equipment and expert facilitators into community settings and invited people to explore the technology. People could make whatever they wanted—the only boundaries were imposed by technical limitation. However, the emphasis throughout was not on the production of assistive aids (which pose the disabled body as a ‘lack’ which requires a prosthetic fix), but on the opening up of a ‘fabulous fab lab’ in which people could experiment with making as an assertion of agency.