Project title

Critical Design and Making by Children (MAKE-A-DIFFERENCE)

The project examines how children of today can be empowered to develop an identity of critical designer and maker. This will be pursued by introducing children to the worlds of digital innovation and fabrication as well as critical design and making. Children have been surrounded by digital technology from their birth; however, they lack skills and competencies to shape and make it. They should be offered such skills and competences, added with a critical stance towards design, making and technology as well as a will to utilize those for empowering people and making the world a better place. Schools and teachers are in desperate need of help in educating children in this respect. The project contributes to scientific knowledge by exploring critical design and making in practice with children and their teachers and schools, as well as by theorizing and empirically exploring children’s critical designer and maker identity emergence and trajectories.