Fostering creative citizens through co-design and public makerspaces

This project was a collaboration of two universities, Brunel University London and Tongji University, with support from various partners, e.g., The Glass-House Community Led Design. 

The aim was to develop a novel combination of 1) design interventions, 2) public makerspaces and 3) online design resources as a means of fostering creative citizens in China in an inclusive and bottom-up manner.

The rationale was that human capital increasingly became the most important asset of a country and experts argued that the key to sustainable economic growth of a city/country was an ability to attract, nurture and retain a creative workforce. One effective way of promoting and fostering creativity is to actively engage people in creative activities, such as co-design and hands-on making activities. The project was spread across three years (October 2018 – September 2021). 

In Year 1, the team focused on identifying good practices of creative communities and finding out key requirements regarding public makerspaces in China in order to create suitable strategies. The key findings were written up as short case studies. In Year 2 and 3, the team worked with Tongji DESIS Lab to turn their existing makerspace on Fushun Road Community Centre, Shanghai into a Community Creative Hub. The team also collaborated with Tongji DESIS Lab to create community co-design projects to introduce the co-design process to the local communities. The processes and outcomes of community projects have been extracted to develop suitable strategies and action plans for scaling up. The outcomes of the project are available via the links below.

• Full Report
• Design by Consensus: Makerspace (Facilitation Guide)
• Creative Workshops with Communities

​List of Publications:

• de Sousa, S., Lam, B. and Choi, Y. (2024) ‘Case Study 8 Co-Designing Public Makerspace with Communities in Shanghai, China’, in L. Natarajan (ed.) 10 Case Studies to illustrate the ten Participatory Principles of the International Participatory Charter. The International Participatory Charter for Urban & Territorial Development to Deliver the New Urban Agenda. pp. 68 – 78.
• Choi, Y., Lam, B., Chen, X., de Sousa, S., Liu, L. and Ni, M. (2022) Making and Makerspaces: Exploring community centres as creative hubs in China, The Design Journal. 25(4), 636-656.
• Choi, Y., Lam, B., Chen, X., de Sousa, S., Liu, L. and Ni, M. (2022) Co-Design Visions of Public Makerspaces in China, International Journal of Design Creativity and Innovation. 10(2), 1-14
• Lam, B., Choi, Y., Chen, X., Ni, M. and de Sousa, S. (2021) Fostering creativity through co-design and making: Case studies of makerspaces in the UK, Journal of Design Research. 19(1/2/3), 133-154
• de Sousa, S. (2021) Space for Connection: fostering creative citizens through makerspaces in China. The Glass-House Community Led Design.
• Lam, B., Choi, Y., Chen, X., de Sousa, S., Liu, L. and Ni, M. (2020) Co-Design Visions of Public Makerspaces in China. 6th International Conference on Design Creativity (ICDC), University of Oulu, Finland, August 2020.
• Chen, X., Lam, B. and Choi, Y. (2019) Fostering creative citizen in China through co-design and public makerspaces, International Association of Societies of Design Research (IASDR) Conference, Manchester, September 2019.​