MAKERS challenges the prevailing employability framework by positioning human agency and dignity, rather than market fitness, as the foundation for meaningful participation in society and work. While acknowledging the importance of knowledge, skills, and qualifications, the project fundamentally reorients their purpose: from adapting humans to serve economic imperatives to enhancing human capacity for dignified existence in an era of accelerating systemic, organizational and ecological transitions caused by digitalization.
Methodologically, MAKERS bridges individual agency findings from experimental neuroscience with humanities and arts approaches to collective phenomena, developing a comprehensive technosocial framework that addresses how digital technologies, through both environmental costs and cognitive constraints, limit human capacity to envision and implement sustainable futures, while creating strategies to overcome these limitations and foster wiser, dignified human-technology-environment relationships.
The MAKERS consortium comprises 21 partners, combining academic institutions with cultural and policy organizations to achieve the project’s objectives through international and intersectoral knowledge exchange.
EU Academic Partners (7): University of Silesia (US, PL), Université Paris 8 (P8, FR), University of Primorska (UP, SI), Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (AFAW, PL), Czech Academy of Sciences (CETEP, CZ), Slovak Academy of Sciences (IFSAS, SK), Zeppelin University (ZU, DE). Associated Academic Partners (3): Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities Skopje (ISSHS, MK), Universidad de las Artes (UARTES, ECU), Simon Fraser University (SFU, CA). Non-Academic Partners (11): Arsenal Gallery (AGB, PL), Disnovation.org (DIS, FR), Contributory Lab Foundation (CL, PL), Working Group Foundation (WG, PL), Centro Ecuatoriano de Arte Contemporáneo (CEAC, ECU), Biennale Warszawa Foundation (BW, PL), Open Place Platfom for Interdisciplinary Practice (OPK, UA), Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje (MOCA, MK), Europe, A Patient Association (EUPA, PL), La Générale Association (GEN, FR), Maison du Futur Transdisciplinary Cultural Platform (MF, CH).