This two-year project involves an international and inter-sector research and training network that focuses on the potential of makerspaces, which are specific spaces that enable creative design and the production of both digital and non-digital artefacts, to foster the digital literacy and creative skills of young children. A key aim of the project is to inform educational policy and practice in this area, enabling formal learning institutions (early years settings and primary schools) to learn from practice in non-formal learning spaces, and vice-versa, and also to foster innovation and entrepreneurship in the makerspace sector, enabling SMEs to develop robust business models and appropriate resources for future work in this area. The project involves 16 academic and non-academic beneficiaries and 10 non-academic, non-beneficiary partners across 6 EU countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Romania, UK), an Associated Country (Colombia) and 4 Third Countries (Australia, Canada, South Africa and USA). This global network of university scholars, cultural industry partners in makerspaces, early years practitioners, museum educators and librarians will engage in a collaborative research and training programme that addresses 4 objectives, which are to: 1. Conduct a comprehensive review of the role of makerspaces in the formal and non-formal educational experiences of children and young people. 2. Undertake empirical research to determine how makerspaces can foster the digital literacy and creativity skills and knowledge of young children. 3. Develop a conceptual framework for analysing young children’s engagement in makerspaces. 4. Make recommendations for policy and practice that will foster innovation and entrepreneurship in SME makerspaces and facilitate the use of makerspaces for enhancing digital literacy in early childhood educational institutions and non-formal learning spaces.

Made4You facilitates co-design of open healthcare for people with physical limitations. People’s needs regarding their physical limitations are personal, subjective and diversified. To customize health care solutions, a process of personalization is needed, which cannot be provided through the current industrial focus of ‘one size fits all’. Therefore, the project aims to: - Build an ecosystem, linking existing local communities of citizens with disabilities and their families, healthcare professionals and makers and establish collaboration between these separate communities to develop their own open-source and license interventions. - Provide access to open source and digital fabrication tools enabling citizens with disabilities and healthcare professionals, in co-creation with designers and makers (DIY communities and maker spaces) to create customized self-made solutions to improve quality of life or services provided. - Improve the accessibility of open source products; co-production of products that are tailored to people with special needs or disabilities as well as healthcare professionals and bypassing the limitations of the classical industrial production. - Foster the ecosystem through open exchange of knowledge, case stories and manuals. Within the DIY approach, local production and global knowledge sharing is key. - Build guidelines that allow anyone to replicate formats everywhere, considering the socio-technical aspects as well as relevant legal and regulatory frameworks, quality standards, IPR implications, security, safety and privacy issues. The long-term goal is to affiliate a community of designers, users, fablabs and maker spaces who develop similar projects and replicate events and activities in various cities all around Europe or even globally. This process will produce a critical mass of projects that can be used and build upon: a knowledge-sharing platform that aims to achieve mass adoption and global impact.

Public Engagement (PE) and Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) have emerged, in the last decade, as the results of policies and initiatives demanding the early involvement of multiple actors, including the public, in science and innovation. Nevertheless, the early engagement of actors is facing many challenges, and PE rarely goes beyond the stage of consultation. On the other hand, the integration of co-creation in European STI policy and programmes faces barriers such as: scarce understanding of co-creation among researchers and policy makers; “sectorialised” approach to STI policy making; lack of effective knowledge to cope with constraints that hamper the co-creation process. The introduction of design methodologies and tools is emerging as a valuable approach to deal with these problems, as design has been already recognised as key to operationalise co-creation in different fields. Thanks to an iterative process centred on prototyping - co-design effectively support co-creation to move from the ideation of new solutions and policies to their implementation. Given this framework, SISCODE aims: to understand co-creation as a bottom-up and design-driven phenomenon that is flourishing in Europe (in fab labs, living labs, social innovations, smart cities, communities and regions); to analyse favourable conditions that support its effective introduction, scalability and replication; and to use this knowledge to cross-fertilise RRI practices and policies. To reach this aim SISCODE will: run a European study to compare co-creation ecosystems and describe effective dynamics and outcomes of the integration of society in science and innovation; experiment with design as a new system of competences capable to support the development of implementable RRI and STI solutions and policies; and understand the transformations needed to embed co-creation in STI policy making, overcoming barriers and resistance to change and considering organisational transformation.