DiDIY Project and De Montfort University announce research partnership

The Digital DIY Project (DiDIY) studies, in the context of the EU H2020 Programme, the long term impacts on European society of DIY digital manufacturing, in order to develop guidelines for European educators and policy makers, that help them to deal with DiDIY and maximize its positive impacts on society.

The activities of the Design and New Product Development group (DNPD) of the Art, Design and Humanities Faculty of De Montfort University, include work on "Designing for the Developing World", which involves the use of technology and innovation to end poverty and provide a sustainable future for everyone on our planet. DNPD recent activities include studies on "the real opportunity to use 3D printing in developing economies and help to leapfrog highly capital intensive manufacturing".

However, "developing economies" or "low income areas" are everywhere, including inside the European Union, as noted in a DiDIY blog post, and in 2015 the DiDIY Project presented a paper that discusses how Digital DIY can make rural areas really sustainable.

For all these reasons, DPND and the DiDIY Project intend to cooperate along two, semi-independent tracks. The first will consist of doing further research together, in the areas of common interests outlined above, and in writing papers, and organizing workshops or other events, on the same topics.

The other path of common activity will be an evaluation of how to co-develop and reuse the "Model of Making" already under development by Work Package 7 of the DiDIY Project, for these two purposes:

• further testing and validation of the model itself, by feeding it with data from DNPD activities, that is from makers in non-european contexts.
• providing DPND with useful inputs for planning their future activities, and in general highlight cultural differences in making in different countries, which may also be explored in future joint researches.