A new landscape for skill-sharing emerges from pandemic aftermath
By Ruby Irene Pratka, Shareable
The pandemic has created many challenges for skills exchanges and other sharing initiatives that rely on person-to-person contact.
Tag: Repair cafes
How we went from “makers” to “trash-makers” – and how to get back
By Bart Hawkins Kreps, An Outside Chance
Why do we have so much stuff? Why is it so hard to find good stuff? And when our cheap stuff breaks, why is it so hard to fix it?
10 Stories of Transition in the US: The Spread of Repair Cafes
By Steve McAllister, Transition US
"For three or four hours, you have an amazing operating system that runs on very little money, but just people who sincerely want to help each other. This is where I have heard many people say, 'This is the kind of world I want to live in.'"
How Farnham UK’s Repair Café Takes a Bite Out of Waste
By Martin Charter, We Hate to Waste
According to the Repair Café Foundation, there are now more than 950 repair cafés worldwide with 18 in the UK. Repair cafés offer individuals with ‘fixing’ expertise to come together to perform a useful service for their community, while enjoying the camaraderie of friends and neighbors.
United Against Programmed Obsolescence
By Marcela Basch, Future Perfect
In Argentina, people with damaged or broken items meet to repair them at the Repair Club....Clothes, home appliances, toys, books, bicycles: even the most hopeless items can be fixed according to the Club de Reparadores (Repairers’ Club)...
Repair Cafe and Seeing the Beauty in Broken Things
By Lisa Van Dusen, Shareable
Actually, in Silicon Valley, some engineers do still work with their hands, some people appreciate the beauty in broken things and some people help each other for free for the fun and good will of it. Here's a story of how that happened all at once for me.
Reviving the Lost Art of Fixing
By Ute Scheub, Futureperfect
At the Repair and Service Center in Vienna, the long-term unemployed retrain to be "mechatronic engineers" and repair electronic devices.
The Journey of Setting up a Reuse and Repair Centre – a Solution for a Circular economy
By Sophie Unwin, Reconomy Project
As consumers, we are taught to be dissatisfied with what we have.
Reimagining Santa’s Grotto: The Restart Project
By Rob Hopkins, Transition Culture
The mental image we were brought up with of Santa's workshop was of hoards of elves working away making new stuff, painting wooden trains with paintpots and so on. But what if we were able to shift that image, and instead tell our children that the elves aren't making stuff, they're repairing it?
How to start a Repair Cafe
By Sven Eberlein, Shareable
If you've ever found yourself on the phone with a customer service representative telling you it would cost more to fix your electric tea kettle than to just buy a new one, you are well acquainted with the concept of "planned obsolescence." The good news is that people across the world are getting wise to the intentional design flaws hoisted upon us by clever manufacturers eager to sell more products, and are coming up with new and creative ways to salvage perfectly usable things.