Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
For the second year, Shareable partnered with Greenpeace and other organizations for MAKE SMTHNG Week, which ran from Nov. 23 to Dec. 3. The campaign was a huge success, with almost 400 events in 48 countries that focused on promoting repair, reuse, and resource reclamation, and over 10,000 participants online who shared their experiences with the #MAKESMTHNGWeek hashtag.
This is a story about people who build their own machines. It’s a story about people who, due to necessity and/or conscious choice, do not buy commercial equipment to work their lands or animals, but who invent, create and adapt machines to their specific needs: for harvesting legumes, for hammering poles, for hitching tools onto tractors.
In order to make the future that we want, we have to openly confront the stark problems already at the heart of the Third Digital Revolution, and there are several glaring problems already in plain sight. Despite great efforts toward democratizing the Third Digital Revolution by making much of the technology “open source”, historically oppressed and disenfranchised communities remain excluded.
The goal of this campaign was to reduce wasteful consumption over the holiday season and encourage people to make or repurpose what they need. Workshops like a toy sharing and repairing workshop in Aveiro, Portugal, an upcycling event in Hannover, Germany, and a gift making workshop in Helsinki, Finland, encouraged the over 10,000 participants to create new things from old items, repair broken goods, and learn new skills through do-it-yourself projects. A
The programmes that we deliver in the museum, whether they be from schools to life-long learning, to graduate start-up businesses to whatever, how do those empower the makers of the future? And we understand how making makes us feel better. This is a building that was run in the early 18th century off one power source and produced 300 million yards of silk thread, a day, off a water source. And now it’s run off a power station. So it’s to open up that conversation about what is the future of that?
When the maker culture becomes eminently entrepreneurial, we should wonder what mechanisms are set into motion.
We realized that instead of making the goods we needed to live, we bought them.
