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.

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.