Tim Slingsby is Director of Skills and Education at Lloyd’s Register Foundation.
The Making Spaces project
A partnership with University College London (UCL).
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Duration
This project's duration was 2020 - 2025
Value of grant
£1.5mil
Partner info
University College London (UCL) is a prestigious, multidisciplinary university located in London, United Kingdom.
Contact details
Making space for wider and more equitable participation in STEM.
Find out more
Visit the Making Spaces websiteOverview
The Making Spaces project is a Lloyd’s Register Foundation-funded research and development project led by University College London (UCL) that works with practitioners and young people around the world to identify, develop and share equitable approaches that can support diverse young people to engage meaningfully with science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) based subjects.
Makerspaces are part of a movement to democratise and open access to STEM-related careers, offering informal, multipurpose sites designed for collaborative hands-on learning and creative production.
In the first phase of the project (2020-2022), the team worked with practitioners and over 200 young people from unsupported communities. Working with three partner settings - Knowle West Media Centre (Bristol), MadLab (Manchester), and the Institute of Making (UCL, London) they identified, built and shared expertise on inclusive and equitable practice in makerspaces
In its second phase (2022-2024), Making Spaces expanded globally, exploring and understanding equitable practice in international makerspaces in four new countries - Nepal, Slovenia, USA, and Palestine. Researchers collected extensive qualitative and quantitative data to understand the impact of equitable practice on youth and practitioner outcomes. The result was the 3-STEP approach, an evidence-based set of practical resources, including a guidebook, online course and evaluation tools, to support equitable practice in makerspaces.
Now in its third phase (2024-2025), the project is running an accreditation course with professionals from the US, UK, Africa, Asia and Europe to deliver and spread training in the 3-STEP approach worldwide.
For more information on this project, visit the Making Spaces website, subscribe to our newsletter or contact our programme manager using the details below.
“Makerspaces offer the chance to share materials, skills, interests, and ideas. The support we’re getting from Lloyd’s Register Foundation is allowing us to identify and collect evidence on how makerspaces can work in partnership with young people to develop their STEM skills and confidence in ways that make a real difference to their own lives and to the wider community.”
Professor Louise Archer Karl Mannheim Professor of Sociology of Education, University College London (UCL)
