Enabling local circular economy practices through maker symbiosis: the case of Istanbul

Pop-Machina H2020 project aims to explore the potentials for local circular economies through collaborative production in seven pilot cities. This endeavour requires initiating a sustainable maker symbiosis, through activating links among various maker ecosystem actors. This paper provides a snapshot of the initial steps of this, i.e. the deployment of a series of online participatory design tools engaging citizens and other maker ecosystem actors to collaboratively design pilot activities through the case of Istanbul, the largest pilot city of the project. Local Future Stories was developed for İstanbul citizens to envision the future everyday life in a circular neighbourhood and revealed shared city and neighbourhood values in terms of collaborative production and local circular economies. İstanbul Microsite was developed to introduce overall project goals, İstanbul priorities and Local Future Stories to maker ecosystem actors, and to invite them to share pilot activity ideas as part of the pilot. These initial activity ideas were then further developed through online co-design workshops with various maker ecosystem actors, identifying potentially interested stakeholders, drawing links among them and among activity proposals, and developing the steps for each activity from conception to finalization. This paper presents the major outcomes of the tools used and the process while discussing how they can activate links among maker ecosystem actors to initiate maker symbiosis.