Conference Themes for 2026

Back to Basics

• What defines a makerspace or making space
• Different approaches, shared operational findings and reacting to user feedback

Doing more with less? Alternative routes to success 

• A range of current challenges facing higher educational institutions making spaces.
• Restricted finances, staffing, internal challenges and more! 

The Collaborative Advantage

• Open discussion: What steps can we take to collectively support each other.

Local community engagement and partnership 

• What local community support and partnership can look like and why it is worth doing.

EDI best practice 

Technician Development

Making as an extra curricular activity

• Spotlighting exciting work students are making using makerspace for competitions such as Formula Student, Railway Challenge, European Hyperloop week, Mach rocketry competition, Race to Space.
• How makerspaces are enabling entrepreneurs through prototype building

How makerspaces are embedded in curriculum

• Recent developments on making in curricular activities where students get academic credit for the projects they make in make

Student led makerspaces

• Recent developments on students taking active role in shaping and running makerspaces.

Health and Safety workload - a collective approach

• Managing H&S in makerspaces especially involving emerging and higher risk activities such as Li-ion battery packs, rocket engines, magnets, manufacture and fabrication of fibre reinforced composites.
• How can UK making spaces easily support each other in replicating the same work in different places - a proposal

Unimaker in the future

• Help us develop and sustain Unimaker in new ways for years to come