© 2018 by Lucia Corsini, James Moultrie. – This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.1344465 The role of Makerspaces for crisis-affected communities: benefits and challenges Lucia Corsini, James Moultrie Lucia Corsini, University of Cambridge Cambridge, UK lc500@cam.ac.uk James Moultrie, University of Cambridge Cambridge, UK jm329@cam.ac.uk Abstract The number of Makerspaces around the world has grown exponentially in recent years. These creative spaces offers non-expert users the opportunity to engage with digital fabrication tools alongside traditional craft tools. Recently, the humanitarian sector has become interested in Makerspaces as a way to empower people to meet their own needs. A number of Makerspaces specifically aimed at crisis-affected communities have emerged. However, to date there has been virtually no research on how these spaces operate. The current research addresses this gap and documents the results of an ongoing study. This study conducts interviews with five providers of Makerspaces for crisis-affected people, using grounded theory to reveal the benefits and challenges of operating these spaces. In addition, a systems thinking lens is applied to identify common problem-generating patterns across the four Makerspaces investigated in the study. This study has practical implications for the management of Makerspaces for crisis-affected people. It also reveals the need to understand the behaviour of the Makerspaces in more detail in order to identify further opportunities to counteract the challenges highlighted. Future research will validate current findings with other perspectives, from users and other contexts. Keywords Makerspaces, digital fabrication, humanitarian, crisis-affected communities 1 Introduction In the period since Gershenfeld (2012) declared a digital revolution, access to digital fabrication tools in Makerspaces has grown dramatically. At the same time, natural and man-made disasters resulting from climate change, environmental damage and conflict, are all contributing to a rise in humanitarian demand (HLP, 2015). Recently, there is increasing interest in how crisis-affected communities can engage with innovation (Betts et al., 2015). This has in part, been driven by the recognition of the creative and adaptive potential of people living in limited-resource contexts, as found in literature on frugal innovation (Radjou et al., 2012; Prabhu, 2017). Frugal innovation describes the innovative practices of non-expert designers who make do with limited resources. This type of ‘bottom-up’ design, which is driven by the end user, promises greater empowerment by allowing people to find solutions for their own problems. Lately, there have been a number of efforts to engage with innovation from the humanitarian sector. This is reflected in the emergence of Makerspaces, targeted at providing resources for crisis-affected communities. Despite the growing number of these spaces, there is relatively little understanding about how they operate, their potential benefits and the barriers to their work. To date, the majority of research