The Makers: Mobilizing Arts, Knowledge, and Education to Reclaim Human Agency. Strategies for the Age of Machine Thinking
‘The Makers’ sounds like the name of a band—in the vein of The Beatles, The Ramones, or the Sex Pistols. Yet, it is not. It is an international research initiative spanning the humanities and the arts, bringing together twenty partner organisations from ten countries, including universities, cultural institutions, and NGOs. The University of Silesia in Katowice is proud to participate in this undertaking as the project consortium leader, represented by the Centre for Critical Technology Studies and Michał Krzykawski, PhD, DSc, Assoc. Prof., who serves as the project coordinator.
One of the project’s primary goals is to strengthen human agency and confront a fundamental question: what does it mean to possess—or lack—a sense of agency in the era of machine thinking, where computational systems can perform tasks previously considered the exclusive domain of human intellect and generate synthetic content that permeates our daily lives?
At the heart of the project lies the capacity to dream—understood as the ability to translate dreams into action and project oneself into a desired future by transforming existing mental and institutional structures. Dreaming holds transformative power. We believe that this capacity can be cultivated collectively, and we posit that it is a crucial element of agency.
We have divided the project into three areas. The first focuses on generating diverse, locally grounded knowledge. The second addresses education, combining critical media literacy, critical pedagogy, speculative design, and political ecology in the spirit of the co-research practices developed by philosopher Bernard Stiegler. The third area is art, through which we demonstrate that computational technologies can be redesigned to foster human flourishing beyond the capitalist value system.
Our work challenges the dominant paradigm in which education, professional development, and the so-called “competencies of the future”—including creative and critical thinking—are treated primarily as tools for adapting people to market demands and the pressures associated with the institutional implementation of artificial intelligence. Instead, we place human agency, dignity, and defiance at the centre. We recognise these as the foundation for meaningful social participation and as essential for leading a decent life in a world rapidly being transformed by digitalisation and the ecological crisis of capitalism. It is precisely this shift in perspective that the capacity to dream enables—and that is why it is worth cultivating.
All information is also available on the project website.
Project number: 101299616 — THE MAKERS — HORIZON-MSCA-2025-SE-01
Project start date: 1 September 2026
Duration: 4 years
The Makers consortium comprises:
Academic partners from the EU
University of Silesia in Katowice (PL, coordinator), Université Paris 8 (FR), University of Primorska (SI), University of Nova Gorica (SI), Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (CZ), Czech Academy of Sciences (CZ), Slovak Academy of Sciences (SK).
Associated academic partners
Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities Skopje (MK), Universidad de las Artes (EC), Simon Fraser University (CA).
Non-academic partners
Galeria Arsenał (PL), Grupa Robocza Foundation (PL), Pracownia Współtwórcza Foundation (PL), Biennale Warszawa Foundation (PL), Pacjent Europa Association (PL), Disnovation.org (FR), La Générale Association (FR), Maison du Futur Transdisciplinary Cultural Platform (CH), Open Place Platform for Interdisciplinary Practice (UA), Centro Ecuatoriano de Arte Contemporáneo (EC).
Funded by the EU. Views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Executive Agency (REA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.