China Day 3: Internal workshop - Towards the co-design of the OD&M Training & experience

Day 3 of the Shanghai Open Design & Manufacturing (OD&M) Project, Learning Mobility to China, provided the EU delegation project team an opportunity to undertake an internal workshop - 'Towards the co-design of the OD&M Training'. We could also reflect on the experience of China in Day 1 & Day 2 of the mobility. The internal workshop - 'Towards the co-design of the OD&M Training' was led by University of the Arts London (UAL) Dr. Matt Malpass, CSM Programme Director, Course Coordinator MA Industrial Design.

We started the session by breaking into small groups which included different EU project members (see list below) and also split up the academics, Makerspace managers, researchers & change managers into different groups. We discussed, shared and recorded the various types of maker profiles we encounter every day as well as reflections of our own profiles/perspectives within a maker environment.

The OD&M project team: UNIVERSITY OF FLORENCE DIDA - ITALY www.dida.unifi.it LAMA AGENCY - ITALY www.agenzialama.eu FURNITURE AND FURNISHINGS CENTRE - ITALY http://csm.toscana.it THE UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS LONDON - UK www.arts.ac.uk GREEN LAB/FABLAB - LONDON UK http://greenlab.org UNIVERSITY OF DEUSTO - SPAIN www.deusto.es TECNALIA R&D - SPAIN www.tecnalia.com UNIVERSITY OF DABROWA GORNICZA - POLAND www.wsb.edu.pl FABLAB LODZ - POLAND http://fablablodz.org P2P FOUNDATION - NETHERLANDS https://p2pfoundation.net TONGJI UNIVERSITY - CHINA www.tongji.edu.cn/english/

We then all came together and shared all our maker profiles with the project team, we were asked to prioritise the top two, most critical profiles to consider and the least critical profiles to consider.    

The workshop helped us consider the kind of 'platform/s' or 'processes' we may start co-creating for the final OD&M training & experience, it was real interesting to hear all the many different perspectives across the maker profiles, cultures, disciplines and languages .

This workshop will support our next project development workshop in London in January.   

All this energy, excitement and talk of future innovation was also being played out all around us, as the workshop was taking place on the same day as the opening of the Communist Party congress in Beijing, huge screens in the university were sharing live coverage of the speeches.

I will be posting each day this week, reflections on the other 4 days of activities in China, visiting other maker spaces, Innovation centres, new tech cities, universities and local governments. See:

Day 1: China, Shanghai Learning Mobility, Intro & Visit with our hosts at Tongji University

Day 2: China, Hangzhou visits with local government, incubators, Universities & enterprises

Day 3: Internal workshop - Towards the co-design of the OD&M Training & experience Shanghai

Day 4: Suzhou. All day long visits to local governments, universities and makerspaces.

Day 5: Institutional meeting with Tongji Dean and University Professors. Focus group for Impact (Internal activity) Wrap up and next steps & experience Shanghai