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An installation consisting of a miniature model and two photographs. Untitled miniature model, mixed materials, Cindy Kohtala, Rickard Åström, Sara Rylander, Magnus Wink, 2025. Untitled photograph, Valldaura Self-Sufficiency Lab, Barcelona, Spain, 30 August 2016, Cindy Kohtala. Untitled photograph, Green Fab Lab model, detail, 9 June 2025, Cindy Kohtala. 

Maker Utopias is a collaborative artistic research project exploring open design and open hardware subcultures. Makers and hackers experiment with open source solutions and ways of organizing that offer alternatives to existing consumerism and global mass production. Yet realizing such ideals as being more “local”, “sustainable” and “democratizing” is not always so simple. In our project, we create miniature dioramas of shared community technology workshops to examine DIY maker and hacker cultures in a new way – their histories, presents and futures. The project is ongoing and is a collaboration between the Umeå Institute of Design (UID) and the Department of Creative Studies and their workshops, UID’s Interaction Lab and Creative Studies’ Sloydlab. The project received seed funding from UmArts as a Small Visionary Project. The installation 'Maker Utopias' was exhibited in the UmArts Summer Exhibition 2025, 11-18 June 2025, UmArts Research Studio. 

Maker Utopias explores how technology subcultures create Actually Existing Utopias, using speculative critical making as a method. We create miniature dioramas of shared community technology workshops to examine DIY maker and hacker cultures in a new way – their histories, presents and futures. Makers and hackers present alternatives to existing consumerism and global mass production in their visions and practices, by experimenting with local open source solutions and ways of organizing that are espoused as more sustainable and democratizing. Yet realizing such tiny utopias in today’s capitalist structures is not always so simple.