Fieldmakers

Concept

Fieldmakers is a collaborative multidisciplinary project, bringing together designers, makers,producers, entrepreneurs and changemakers from across the world in a design and digital fabrication studio situated inside a refugee camp in Lesvos. Here they can collaborate directly in the field with representatives of governments, social organizations, knowledge institutions and humanitarian agencies to provide creative solutions to the current European refugee crisis by accelerating the global Sustainable Development Goals set for 2030:

• No Poverty (SDG 1)
• Good Health & Well-Being (SDG 3)
• Quality Education (SDG 4)
• Gender Equality (SDG 5)
• Affordable and Clean Energy (SDG 7)
• Decent Work and Economic growth (SDG 8)
• Industry Innovation and Infrastructure (SDG 9)
• Sustainable Cities and Communities (SDG 11)
• Responsible Consumption and Production (SDG 12)
• Partnerships for the Goals (SDG 17)

Fieldmakers aims (with its creative projects, products and services) to contribute to the equitable development of vulnerable and marginalized social groups with the purpose of empowering them to become tomorrow’s change-making entrepreneurs.
Fieldmakers advocates technological integration and employability regardless of race, religion or gender. The project inspires young refugees in Lesbos and urban centers across Europe to systematically approach new technologies and use them in entrepreneurial plans that address complex European challenges, resolved through achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
Fieldmakers facilitates access to 21st century skills, assists in the creation of digital & innovative enterprises and promotes connectivity and digital inclusion as accelerators of European equality.

Key activities

1. Humanitarian design innovation
Fieldmakers follows a hands-on approach to design, and works by combining technology, sustainable and recycled materials and additive manufacturing to generate products and projects that positively contribute to the living conditions of the people residing in the camp. Our projects are crafted side-by-side with the beneficiaries and are shared openly with the global open source community in order to be further developed and scaled. Therefore, our designs, though locally produced, can be globally applied.

2. Field consultancy
Fieldmakers provides consultancy and implementation services to European governments, social enterprises, non-governmental organizations and knowledge institutions. The services include conducting field performance tests for new products, developing creative schemes for European cultural institutions, and collaborating with governments and organizations to develop European policy in culture, education and humanities.

3. S.T.E.A.M. workshops
Fieldmakers performs S.T.E.A.M. based workshops to promote digital literacy as means of empowering beneficiaries of all ages and genders. The aim is, with the aid of technology, to overcome social and gender based barriers and enable all the beneficiaries to unleash their creativity and obtain life-shaping skills. Our programs create an environment of open learning and enable all the beneficiaries to gain access to innovative technology for both education and entertainment.

4. Knowledge events
Fieldmakers organises knowledge intensive events, such as workshops, hackathons, seminars and conferences specializing in humanitarian design alongside its partners from across Europe. In the period 2017-2018, LATRA alongside its partners across Europe will produce the following events to promote Fieldmakers:

• Panel discussion in the University of Tampere in Finland (Sep.2017)
• Makers workshop in Denmark in collaboration with Copenhagen Business School (Oct.2017)
• Hackathon in Norway in collaboration with Kroloftet (Nov.2017)
• Humanitarian Summit in Sweden in collaboration with Konstfack (Jan.2018)
• Humanitarian workshop in London in collaboration with Central Saint Martins (Oct.2017)
• Qatar Lab: Humanitarian Exhibition at Virginia Commonwealth University (Jan.2018)

About the team

LATRA was founded by Aris Papadopoulos, an architect, who graduated from the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London and further specialized in the Management & Economics of Innovation in University College London. Following a career in global engineering firms ARUP and AEDAS in London, Aris established LATRA in his native Lesvos in 2012, specializing in the development of innovative architectural, engineering and humanitarian projects. In response to the refugee crisis, LATRA operates a technology driven innovation hub and makerspace in the KARA TEPE Refugee Camp in Lesvos. LATRA is a member of the global UNICEF Design Pool, and projects can be found in the Netherlands, South Africa, the United Kingdom and Greece. The work has been published and exhibited widely. LATRA is the co‐founder of design collectives Atelier Zeitgeist, co‐located in Rotterdam, and the Independent Design Alliance, based in Athens.

The Fieldmakers are:

Christian Gustafson is an industrial designer working for BETTER SHELTER in Sweden, a social enterprise that has developed the Better Shelter/Refugee Housing Unit (RHU), in collaboration with UNHCR and the IKEA Foundation, with the aim to provide refugees with a higher level of safety and dignity during displacement. Today, thousands of Better Shelters are acting as temporary homes, registration centers, medical facilities and food distribution points in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. At Better Shelter, Christian designs, visualizes and develops ideas to solutions from fuzzy front‐end development to product optimization. Better Shelter won the 2016 Beazley Award for Design of the Year.

Jonas Ahme, Industrial Designer, MFA in 2000 and Senior Lecturer in Industrial Design at Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design since 2013.. In 2003 he started his own company, Ahnmé Design, and continued working with products in different scales and contexts. For the past two years Jonas has been Konstfack’s Master of European Design coordinator (MED), a coordinated network of seven universities across Europe.

Elisa Pascucci is Academy of Finland postdoctoral researcher at the University of Tampere, Finland. Her research interests lie in two main areas: the materialities and spatialities of refuge and humanitarian aid, and migrant and refugee political agency, including practices of transnational citizenship and collective mobilization and protests. She has recently started a project on humanitarian economies an humanitarian innovation in responses to the Syrian refugee crisis in Jordan, Lebanon and Greece. Elisa holds a PhD in Human Geography and a degree in Middle Eastern Studies.

Gaspard Bos is an industrial design graduate from TU Delft, and the Director of New State of Matter, a design agency based in Rotterdam, specializing in Sustainable Design Entrepreneurship. He has undertaken extensive research on the use of 3D printers for a number of diverse uses, ranging from humanitarian aid to recycling. Gaspard has engaged in a number of humanitarian centered projects in various locations, ranging from Rotterdam to Peru; his work has been applied to diverse environments from urban areas to the arctic.

Yoni Lefévre is working as a social & visual designer in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. She graduated from the Design Academy Eindhoven in communication design; and before she has also studied 3d design at Sint Lucas (2009). Her project GREY POWER won a connector ring designed by Ted Noten. She was nominated for the Social Design Talent price 2013 and got an honorable mention by Gemeente Eindhoven. In 2015 she was invited to expand her graduation project in Taipei as part of a Designer in Residence program organized by Taipei City Government Department of Cultural Affairs. Before establishing her Studio, she held positions at ShiftDesign in London and StudioCvdBremen, T+HUIS and Tante Nettty.

Oscar Novotny is a product and furniture designer and one of the founders of Kroloftet, a design and manufacturing studio and workshop in Oslo. The focus of his work lies in creating everything from furniture to urban design that allows users to benefit from the content of the products they use. Oscar uses practical work to inspire the conceptual work and vice versa and designs projects and products that raise awareness on consumption and promote a balanced urban ecology.

Nina Havermans is a Dutch product designer, who specializes in sustainable solutions for the circular economy. She graduated from the Design Academy in Eindhoven and following a stream of successful positions as a designer, consultant and educator for design agencies in Holland as well as Norway, Nina co‐founded, Biomimicry Norway, a workshop facilitation outreach to Dutch & Nordic industry and educational institutes.