Effective Communication for Makerspaces

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This article introduces a strategic approach to makerspace communication that starts with organizational goals, clear positioning, and an understanding of relevant audiences. It also explores how communication can demonstrate impact and how its effectiveness can be assessed beyond social media metrics.

This article is part of the “Tolocar: Impulse” initiative, empowering makerspaces in Ukraine to develop their organizations and operations to become more efficient in creating value for their communities. As part of this program workshops on varying organizational topics were conducted for a group of participating makers, implemented by Tolocar’s partners metalab and POLE. One of the topics was how to do external communications right – in the following, the key learnings are summarized. The workshop was hosted by Yuliia Lyakhovych, Head of Communications at METALAB.

For many small organizations, communications quickly becomes synonymous with social media: What should we post this week? Do we need more photos? Should we be on another platform? The workshop challenged this approach. As communications expert Yuliia put it, “Communication is not the same as content.”

Instead, communication should start with what the makerspace wants to achieve as an organisation. If the goal is to attract more clients, communication should help potential clients understand the services and expertise the makerspace offers. If the goal is to find new partners, it should demonstrate what the makerspace can contribute to a collaboration. If the aim is to involve more people from the local community, communication needs to show them why and how they can participate. “Communication objectives should always derive from the organization’s objectives.”

This provides a simple way to plan communication. Before deciding on a channel or format, define the organizational objective, the people you need to reach and what these people need to understand or do. Only then decide whether the best way to achieve this is through a social media post, a project story, a newsletter, direct outreach to potential partners or something else. This also helps small teams use their limited communication resources more deliberately instead of producing content simply because they feel they should.

As Yuliia stressed during the workshop, “You need to have a very clear understanding of who you are.”

Pole Design provided a practical example of how this can change over time. The organization moved away from positioning itself primarily as a community makerspace and instead presented itself as a partner for product development and manufacturing. Its positioning became: “We transform your ideas into products through a complete cycle, from design to a finished solution.” The important point is not the wording itself, but how clearly it tells a potential client what the organization can do for them.

Once this positioning is clear, the next step is to decide whom you are talking to. Makerspaces often work with very different groups, from individual makers and volunteers to businesses, educational institutions, donors and municipalities. They do not all need the same information. A company considering a prototyping project may want to see examples of previous products, available technologies and evidence of reliability. A potential community partner may be much more interested in your network, educational experience and ability to work with local participants.

This is why the workshop stressed that “You cannot communicate to everyone.” The goal is not necessarily to reduce the number of groups a makerspace works with, but to understand which audiences matter for which organizational objective and to communicate accordingly.

Social media statistics are easy to put into numbers, which makes it tempting to use followers, likes or reach as the main indicators of successful communication. The workshop proposed a much more practical test: look at the requests your makerspace actually receives. During the discussion, Yuliia asked: “Are you receiving the enquiries you actually want?... Do you know that you are well positioned?” This is a useful question because incoming requests reveal how people understand an organization. If a makerspace wants to be known for product development but continually receives requests for basic repairs, there may be a gap between how the organization sees itself and what its communication tells others.

Pole Design experienced this when changing its positioning. As its communication increasingly presented the organization as a product-development and manufacturing partner, the type of enquiries it received also changed: instead of mainly receiving simple repair requests, it increasingly received requests related to product development and manufacturing.

Makerspaces can apply the same principle without complicated analytics. Over several months, simply keep track of the enquiries that arrive and ask whether they correspond to the work, partners and opportunities you want to attract. If the right people are approaching you for the right reasons, this can be a much stronger sign of effective communication than a growing follower count alone.

Many makerspaces work with projects and donors, which means that communication can easily start to resemble reporting. A typical post might state that a workshop took place, how many people participated and what activities were conducted. This information is useful, but by itself it says little about the value created for participants or the community.

The workshop therefore encouraged makerspaces to communicate not only activities but also what changed because of them. Yuliia summarized this as: “Even when communication is report-driven, embed the meaning of the impact you create.”

For a woodworking workshop, for example, the number of participants can still be included, but the more interesting question is what those participants learned, made or were able to do afterwards. For a community project, show not only that new furniture was produced, but how it is being used and what changed in the space as a result.

Participant experiences and direct quotes can be particularly useful here because they provide evidence of what an activity meant to the people involved. Instead of the organization explaining that a training was useful, a participant can describe what they learned or what they intend to change in their own work. It is also worth thinking about communication throughout the whole life of a project rather than only when an event happens. The same activity can provide stories about the problem that motivated it, preparations and prototypes, the people involved, mistakes and adjustments during implementation, finished results and what happens afterwards. The workshop showed how one event can therefore generate several meaningful communication opportunities rather than a single event announcement.

This does not mean that makerspaces need to produce more content. In fact, the opposite can be more useful: communicate less, but make each piece of communication clearer about the people involved, the value created and how this connects to the purpose of the makerspace. As Yuliia cautioned, “Don’t create something creative simply for the sake of being creative without understanding why you are creating it.”

If you want to dive deeper into this topic and explore the approaches and examples discussed during the workshop, you can find the full presentation here (Ukrainian language):

File:Communications for Makerspaces.pdf