Building a makerspace in a youth center and imagining futures

The maker movement has gained popularity in many countries over the last decade. This movement is often associated with DIY sub-cultures who benefit from sharing knowledge, creating from recycled items and cheap electronics, prototyping new ideas for social innovation or for entrepreneurship, or as a means of developing much needed skills as we enter the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Many education institutions are building makerspaces because they have the potential to empower youth and help them build identities to prepare them for STEM careers. In marginalized neighborhoods, the challenge is to interest youth in such activities, engage them in projects without making it look like an impossible task or another high-stake school assignment. We undertook the challenge of building a makerspace in a youth center in the Côte-des-Neiges neighborhood, in Montreal. We co-built the space and co-created the programming as we helped the staff and youth develop skills to increase their creative confidence. This paper contributes a process for collaborative action-research grounded in the “realities” of the neighborhood and offers some reflections on the first five months of an ongoing partnership project.