Today, the Maker Movement encompasses 3000+ creative community spaces across 80+ countries-- places such as hackerspaces, fab labs, makerspaces, and tech hubs where anyone can have access to modern technology. The overall impact on society is multi-faceted: constructivist/hands-on education, a sense of agency over technology, repair culture and the circular economy, international collaborations, vocational training, entrepreneurship, and thoughtful problem-solving. Our Nepali colleague describes his makerspace as fostering the mindset “that the world is malleable”; indeed, the grand ambition of the Maker Movement is to bring all hands on deck—regardless of formal education and expertise— to collaborate across sectors and solve global challenges at a local scale.

We will discuss how to land in any random country and find the local Makers, and tell stories from our own global explorations to map the most exciting creative community spaces. We will finally broaden the conversation to include the audience, and ask how these spaces are innovating and improving society.