Study 1: Collecting the experiences of staff & visitors

In the first part of my PhD, I wanted to capture what the Making Studios already are. The studios were established in 2019, and have been an incredibly successful and popular part of Life Science Centre. As I'm completely new to the centre, I felt it was incredibly important for me to research the studios as they are, not in some hypothetical and academic version of them.

The best way to do that? Get the perspectives and experiences of the people who use the space. For me, that included the staff who helped set up the Making Studios, who work there now, and who have influences in the space. Crucially, it also involves visitors who use the space - this was especially important to me as a way to look at what was hoped and planned, versus what actually happened in the Making Studios. Over the course of May half term, I interviewed visitor groups in the Making Studios, capturing their experience, thoughts and feelings from the space.

The majority of research we have on making comes from community-based makerspaces or school-based makerspaces, and the majority of these are based in the United States. The Making Studios, and Life in general have a unique place as part of the North-East of England's heritage in engineering & innovation, but also has its own identity as a makerspace which is markedly different from others in the USA, or in schools, library and other museums here in the UK. That's what I'm hoping to capture in my first part of my thesis.