Make Makerspaces green again

As part of its project “Make Makerspaces green again”, the Pankow municipal library wishes to analyse its five existing makerspace programmes with respect to environmental, social and economic sustainability in order to subsequently develop model makerspaces based on sustainable criteria.

In recent years, makerspaces have become a central component of municipal libraries. They serve as a forum for the urban community, a setting for extracurricular learning and place of encounter. However, such makerspaces, such as the one in Pankow which includes a video production station, a podcast studio and a coding hub, have remained a blind spot in terms of environmental impact. In addition to addressing its institutional and project-related carbon footprint, this project will draft a “common-good balance sheet” (according to the movement Economy for the Common Good or ECG), which entails conducting a comprehensive study of its economic and social impact. For example, the project will explore what should be done with existing equipment, what their delivery chains look like, and which suppliers offer especially environmentally-friendly goods. The library users themselves will be actively included in the analysis.

The results will be used to create two new, sustainable makerspaces in the centrally located Heinrich Böll Library and the Karow district branch library in 2024. This marks the continuation of the library’s mission to establish itself as a “green library” which began with its participation in the pilot project “Carbon Footprinting in Cultural Institutions” and its partnership with the German Action Network for Sustainability in Culture and the Media.