Maker Utopias: Speculative design futuring in a polycrisis through miniatures

This poster presents an artistic research project called Maker Utopias and interim findings from an ongoing study. We explore the material, aesthetic, technical and conceptual dimensions of maker culture futures, through the creation of miniature dioramas. Makers and hackers are technology subcultures who encourage others to actively participate in locally relevant and socially good design and production, often termed grassroots innovation. Their narratives envision replacing empty consumerism with more empowering, creative, circular, democratic and community-based production in shared workshops (fab labs and makerspaces), according to local needs, materials and resources. We ask, what does it take to build tiny sustainable solar societies in the interstices of unsustainable macro structures, in the face of hypercapitalism and the polycrisis? What do sustainability transformations and industrial transitions really look like at the grassroots? Perhaps we as a society can only create such utopias in miniature form.