[Lab] Strategies for inclusion?

[Jason Cobill]

   I'm really excited to share that the maker gang I work with
inadvertently hit gender parity without ever explicitly setting out to. (5
women, 5 men)
   Certainly gender disparities exist in the Maker Movement here, but I
think Ottawa (maybe more than other places), has tremendous women role
models and leadership in the tech community and consequently the local
maker movement benefits from their efforts. I could spend all day sending
shoutouts, but people like Ladies Learning Code, GirlForce, Carleton WiCS,
Algonquin WEET, etc, etc are organizations that should be celebrated and
supported. Not forgetting the awesome gang of women instructors at the
uOttawa Makerspace and the volunteers at RHoK, Pens and Pixels, IGDA, Game
Jam, WordCamp, DrupalCamp and other local hackathon events.

   The issue of race in the Maker community is really complex, and I think
inseparable from issues of class, income and privilege. "Making" is a hobby
that requires a considerable investment of time and money that's out of
reach for most. Again, we have some excellent organizations in Ottawa that
deserve a shoutout, in particular Brittania Woods Community Center, who
packed up a busload of people from Ottawa's poorest neighbourhood to
shuttle them to last year's Maker Faire.
   https://www.facebook.com/erica.bregman/videos/10201113737722576/
   Brittania Woods is also running a code mentorship program called Kids
Can Code, and have invested heavily in maker toys (Lego Mindstorms,
arduinos, robot kits, etc) to get into the hands of kids who don't have
them at home. They're doing really amazing work - the kind of work more
people should be hearing about.

   I think it's really important to reach out and support these
organizations, many of which need volunteers and mentors more than they
need money (but they need that too). It's easy to drop a 3D Printer on a
poor neighbourhood (which seems really trendy right now), but it's an
enormous investment of time and effort to actually run workshops and
facilitate exploration.

  ---

   Playing Devil's Advocate a little: I was disappointed when O'Reilly
started producing "Craft" magazines and events separated from the Make
brand - I felt like they were being intentionally divisive. The Crafting
(as defined by O'Reilly) community is very heavily female-dominated but the
distinction is entirely arbitrary. I feel like we could reach gender parity
overnight if we just broadened the (already hazy) definition of "Maker" to
include textile artists, culinary explorers, horticulturalists, etc, etc. I
mean ultimately the thing that defines a "Maker" is a passion for creating
things, right?
   Consider that there are *4 million* Ravelry users. What is knitting if
not a kind of manual 3d Printing process? And have you seen some of the
machines they're using? There are some crazy innovative quilters out there
(seriously).
   There's another *47 million* users on Pinterest. You'd better believe
these people are making things.* I think it's petty* to try to separate
them from the Maker community because of some arbitrary corporate
manipulation to isolate a demographic to sell soldering irons.

   PS: I'm always a little scared to wade into these kinds of discussions
publicly because I'm a perfect example of a person with multiple levels of
privilege and these kinds of discussions so often turn explosive online. I
don't mean to trivialize the ongoing diversity problems in STEM, but I feel
like we rarely celebrate the great progress that we're making and the
enormous efforts people have invested to get us here. *highfive* To all of
the awesome ladies, LGBT, and people of colour making super cool stuff in
Ottawa.

   -Jason Cobill


On Thu, Apr 14, 2016 at 11:49 PM, Ryan Stec <ryanstec at artengine.ca> wrote:

> Came across this fascinating read about race, gender and class as it
> relates to the Maker Movement. I wondered about the work we all do together
> as a community and what kind of strategies we will embrace to make our own
> community and city more inclusive?
>
>
> http://tascha.uw.edu/2015/03/power-access-status-the-discourse-of-race-gender-and-class-in-the-maker-movement/
>
> Thoughts anyone?
>
> ___________________________
>
> Ryan Stec
> Artistic Director
> [image: Image result for artengine]
> artengine.ca <http://www.artengine.ca/>
>
>
>
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