WIREDGOV

The Making Good prize, awarded by the UCL-led Making Spaces project, celebrates young people’s innovation in makerspaces and aims to encourage diverse youth engagement with STEM and community engagement.

Yolanda Hadjidemetriou.

The Making Spaces project is a four-year international research and development collaboration that works with practitioners and young people from partner makerspaces in five countries: Nepal, Slovenia, USA, the UK and Palestine. It aims to identify, develop and share equitable approaches to support diverse young people to engage meaningfully with STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), with funding from the Lloyd's Register Foundation. 

The project team developed the Making Good prize to showcase the breadth of the innovative work made by young people in their respective makerspaces. 

This year, the prize sought to highlight the value of inclusive STEM participation and the powerful, inspiring role that young people can play in shaping their communities for the better.

On 18 June 2024, an award ceremony recognised the eight inaugural winners of the international Making Good prize in London. 

Applications had been welcomed from young people, individually or in groups, who attended any of the six makerspaces in the Making Spaces project. 

The prize had four project categories centred around developing safe, sustainable, and socially just communities.

1. Safe: Making the world a safe place, including protecting people or the natural world from harm
2. Social justice: Supporting equity, inclusion, and social justice; promoting respect and wellbeing among individuals and communities
3. Sustainable: Supporting and promoting environmentally sustainable living, protecting the planet and life on earth
4. Panel’s choice: Retrospectively added to recognise projects that particularly impressed the judging panel

Each winner was awarded a cash prize to support the further development of their project. There were two winners from each age bracket (10-15 and 16+ years) in every category. 

The award ceremony involved key figures across the makerspace and STEM sector. IOE’s Professor Louise Archer and Dr Tim Slingsby (Director of Skills and Education at Lloyd’s Register Foundation) awarded prizes to each project winner.

The young people from Spark makerspace in Palestine won four of the eight awards for their hard work, innovation and skills. 

Another prize-winning project was the ‘Waste Sorting System’; the team created a machine that categorises waste using specialised sensors to address local challenges around waste management.

Selem Arasa won the 16+ safe category with her mindfulness app. She said: 

“When I received the results that I won, I didn't believe it. I was so happy! Especially after receiving the feedback, it was amazing to see that someone else enjoyed it. 

“With the prize money I plan to get a monitor, something I desperately need to continue my front-end [coding] work. Overall I thoroughly enjoyed working on this project.” 

All the Making Good prize entries and winners are featured in an online exhibition.

Links

• Making Spaces
• STEM Participation & Social Justice Research