Intentionally Cultivating Diverse Community for Radically Open Access Makerspaces

Abstract

Academic makerspaces which are discipline-agnostic face the daunting task of trying to meet the needs of a humbling array of approaches to inquiry while maintaining a sustainable and safe environment for making. Establishing a set of policies that does not place structural barriers based on discipline demographics is a substantially separate process from establishing a sociocultural environment that earnestly facilitates “the imaginative work of interdisciplinarity” for faculty and student research within a simultaneous variety of departmental affiliations and backgrounds. This paper explores the multifaceted efforts undertaken at the University of Texas at Arlington FabLab to legitimately serve as wide a cross-section of the campus community in the makerspace as possible, using a notably diverse campus community as a case study.