Publishing Publishing Publishing
How can we make repair and fixing spaces more accessible to women and children?
If you browse through social media to see the various community repair groups across the UK, you may notice, pictures after pictures, men are fixing loads of items - electrical, electronic, mechanical even book binding and more - they have the skills and we cannot help to take pictures of them, the process they go through to repair and finally the fixed item.
Where are the ladies who fix? they exist. Can we encourage them to come along to Fixers events? Can we encourage more women to fix as well as children
Across all the repair events I organised over the years - more than 30 events, I met seldomly female fixers. One was a wizz with everything she touched. Another was an expert with repairing sewing machine. A last one found her way around computers. Over the years, I also learnt few tricks up my sleeves and gave it a go to fix few items too. It was about claiming the space to learn by asking 'can I try?'
Writing to one of the female fixers about Leicester Fixers developmenet, she wrote that we ought to do more to understand who fixes, what interest women and children to fix, what can we change at repair events to make it more accessible to women and children.
The Restart Project has a project Rosie the Restarter - a bimonthly event for women where they learn skills to fix and repair and meet with other repairers. We can get ourselves from it. I also saw photo projects of women fixing items that is also inspiring.
As we are looking at more fundings and reshaping Leicester Fixers, there are many good questions to tackle:
- how can we encourage more women and children to engage with repair events?
- what digital, art or photo project can we develop that demonstrate or show that repair is a practice that is inclusive and accessible to all?
- how can we design events and workshops that are inclusive to all?
- What happens if we move the focus from how successful the repair was to how better the fixer is from the experiences? Would we inspire more people to try to repair?
Let's see as we move forward and bear in mind those various questions how we can slowly develop a plan of action and implement, we may succeed in developing new ways of organising events which are more participative and inclusive.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts
Climate Action Leicester Leicestershire, Climate Vigil Invitation Saturday 21st 12-1pm
- Climate Action Leicester Leicestershire for the launch of their Climate vigil on Saturday 21st 12-1pm at the Clock Tower, Gallowtree Gate in Leicester.
- The vigil are silent, wearing Black or White, and are to show and signal that local groups care and stand together about the issue of climate change and are concerned for all the people and places suffering from climate change across the world.
- Are you joining?
Meeting with FlowFinder
Leicester Fixers met this week with FlowFinder to discuss areas of focus and next steps to consolidate what has been and do better moving forward.
In the next few months, Leicester Fixers will do the following activities:
- redefine their vision, mission, objectives and value with the input of all the fixers. Here is a first draft
- Consider their delivery focus against their aims, objectives, funding streams and operations
- Develop their delivery plans
Leicester Fixers
Leicester Fixers is a community of citizens that work together to mend the broken, reduce waste going into landfills, and campaign for the right to repair. We operate under the umbrella of Transition Leicester which aims to create more resilient and sustainable communities.
They do this by
- Sharing tips and suggestions on how to repair
- Promoting repair and upcycling businesses
- Organising Restart Parties and Festival - e.g. Green Festival of Making and Mending
- Delivering Outreach Programme to support citizens to start their own repair group - e.g. Leicestershire Community Repair Outreach Programme
- Delivering presentations and talks to inspire others to start their own repair community
- Contributing to research and discussion about the Right to Repair and the factors influencing prosumers to repair
- Delivering training and workshops
- Participating in National and International Days of Repair
- Founding Leicester Fixers
- Designing and delivering Leicester Fixers Restart Parties
- Green Festival of Making and Mending
- Restart Parties at the Leicester Hackspace
- Outreach in Leicester Wards
- Leicestershire Outreach
- Leicester Fixers Website
- St Matthews Big Green Swap Shop
Give us your views on the first draft of Leicester Fixers vision, mission, objectives and values
- To make repair always the best, easiest, cheapest option for citizens and their broken items in Leicester
- To empower individuals and organisations to repair and mend in Leicester
- Reduce Carbon Emissions
- Increase number of items repaired
- Improve Communities Connection and Wellbeing
- Improve Individual and Community Training
- Achieve Financial Sustainability
- Fairshare,
- People Care
- Earth Care
- Embrace an asset-based community approach where all are recognised and identified as having a gift that they can share with their community
Tools with Leicester Fixers
Writing a book about Leicester Fixers and Repair
Writing a book for a general audience came into my awareness for few weeks now with friends suggesting to turn my doctorate into a book. Then, I was invited to celebrate a girlfriend birthday in Nottingham. Unable to drive to the destination, I was picked up by a newly published author. We spoke all the way there and back about the process of writing a book and some of steps involved in delivering the written product. In the evening. I discussed some of the elements with another friend who told me that she will help me find the necessary funding to make this happen. My first book is about Leicester Fixers, Repair, the Doctorate and more. I want to be able to raise some funding to continue and expand the development of sustainable communities within Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland. Through the book, I want to be able to raise necessary funds to do this. Fingercrossed, this will be possible.
If you would like to support me with this project, please do not hesitate to get in touch.
Asset-Based Community Workshop in London, March 13 & 14 2019
If you are not familiar with Cormac Russell, watch this amazing video of him where he explained how we can support community by helping each one of their members how special each of them are.
I was first introduced to the ABCD programme by a colleague of mine called Deana Wildgoose she run the Hero Project CIC where they empower communities with tools so they can reach their dr
" Nurture Development have mentored Croydon Voluntary Action (CVA) in Asset Based Community Development since early 2011. CVA have gained a wealth of local community building stories to share and are now delighted to partner with Nurture Development to offer a UK wide programme of accredited training for citizens, practitioners and agency leaders. This new training programme will start with a two-day workshop, hosted by Cormac Russell, exploring Asset Based Community Development." - Sarah Burns (Head of Communities), Croydon Voluntary Action
Asset-Based Community Development workshop in London, March 13 & 14, 2019. hashtag#ABCD: A Practical Guide to Promoting Citizen Participation at neighbourhood level. For every paying practitioner, a resident/citizen they serve receives a free place!
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/asset-based-community-development-workshop-for-london-those-working-in-vcses-voluntary-community-tickets-55269437375
- Give you an understanding of the history of ABCD, relating it to your experience of community development.
- Explain the 5 guiding principles of ABCD in both theory and practice.
- Identify the 6 building blocks or assets of community building, exploring how these can be identified, connected and mobilised in the neighbourhood context.
- Share the 8 touch stones of community building, offering stories and examples of their application.
- Identify the ABCD Tools for Change: e.g. Learning Conversations & Asset Mapping.
- Involve you in activities and exercises that you can then use in practice where you live and/or work.
- Use stories and case studies of ABCD in action from our Learning Sites, in the UK and around the world, to highlight effective practice.
- Be the most affordable
- Most credible
- Most citizen and practitioners focused
Let's Repair with Market Harborough Fixers
This is a blog for you if
This is blog is for you if you are serving families, mother, father, children in Leicestershire to
- To take care of what we have in common: The planet
- To encourage them to be open and inclusive of others
- To support them in sharing their gifts for the local economy to be more resilient.
If you tick more than one of this boxes, i am inviting you
- To Get inspired by the stories of people who are in Leicestershire trying to enact change and empowered people to direct their lives
- To share those stories to people around you so they can get inspired
- To submit your story.
Why? Because the power of stories can change the world as long as they are shared widely.
So get sharing!
About me
My name is Marie. I live in Leicestershire since 2012. In my first year of arrival, i engaged with Transition Leicester, Positive Money and Footpaths Leicester. I ran the positive money leicester group. I organised events, a discussion group and the Money workshop to help people reflect upon their relationship with money. I also train as a facilitator to run a Footpaths group to support group and families to reduce their carbon footprint. End of 2014, Zina Zelter from Footpaths and I, we decided to run a year of events culmutating into a day of festival: The Green Festival of Making and Mending. From the festival, Leicester Fixers emerged and has been running Restart Parties since May 2015. In 2018, The project received a grant from Leicestershire County Council to help set up 6 repair communities across Leicestershire. It is currently the main project I am working on.
Apart from those projects, I work and study. I freelance for The Crop Club a social enterprise which supports people to grow food. I have a certificate in Permaculture and teaches from time to time at the Permaculture course in Leicester. I am also a doctorate from Loughborough Design School. My thesis is on the factors influencing user repair propensity. I support students with their work.
Outside of it all, i am a keen dancer (salsa), a beginner violonist, i draw with wax crayons and garden. I live with my husband, embrace our mixed heritage and spend lot of time with our family.
in facilitating a Footpaths Leicester grouprun projects to engage family's members with different communities of knowledge and this mainly through events.
The blog provide an account of the progress of some of the projects and how you can get involved and it features different initiatives in Leicestershire that engage the public on enbironmental and social
Beyond: The Microwave
Death - Repair - Live
It constantly decays.
Natural elements - Moisture, Damp, Expanding Ice - wear away the material fabric as they break, rot and decompose.
Animals and insects breed, chew, poop.
War sets in between planet earth inhabitants.
Humans make mistakes over and over again
They also constantly exult aggressive tendencies towards others and themselves
The entropic tendency can be likened to Freud's notion of a death instinct. The concept of the death instincts was initially described in Beyond the Pleasure Principle 1920, where Freud concluded that all instincts fall into one of two major clasesses: life instincts or death instincts. The two classes are believed to be responsible for our behaviour.
The life instincts, sometimes referred to as sexual instincts, deal with basic survival, pleasure and reproduction. Death instinct emerges because as Freud put it: ''the goal of life is death''.
There is both an inward and outward expression of those death wishes. Aggression is a good example of an outward death instincts. Suicide, depressive tendencies and self-sabotaging are direct inward towards the subject.
Freud noted that people who experience a traumatic event would often reenact that experience. From this, he concluded that people hold an unconscious desire to die but that the life instincts largely temper this wish.
Some research found that in countries where the homicide rate is low, suicide rates tend to rise. It was interpreted as the belief that humanity has a compelling need to destroy oneself or others (Comer, 2011).
Now that you aware of your innate tendencies, what can you do with it?
Destroy, Repair, Live
Destroy the page with random words, Repair it with a story, Share it.
Destroy the shirt, Repair it with embroidery, Wear it.
Destroy your hair, Let them grow once more, Take a picture each day.
Destroy the bowl, Mend it with the glue of gold, Have a pot a noodle
Time will tell as you mend yourself in the world, howall this is.
Forearm yourself with the Politics of Time and Repair the broken work-centred economy - after reading ''the Refusal of Work'' by David Frayne.
In the book, he defines work and exposes critical accounts of different authors on how work is valued and regarded as a morally good behaviour to engage in so that the individual can be financially independent to buy more stuff at the detriments of its own health and wellbeing and the integrity of the natural environment.
He, then, shares the experiences of a number of individuals who refused to work the typical 40 hours a week in favour of working either fewer hours or not at all. The Whys, the Hows and the ongoing tension the participants of the research experience between what is currently seen as an ideal behaviour and their own provide the reader with a mirror to reflect upon their own working or non-working situation.
The work of André Gorz on The Politics of Time punctuates the writing in a beautiful manner and I am thankful to have been introduced to his thoughts.
Finally, He invites us to get ready to open the debate and fix the work-centred economy. He invites everyone to:
- Consider the impact of work centred society on the natural sphere. Look, you may be so consumed with work, you may not be able to self-produce your own needs (cook, repair, clean, educate your children, engage in contemplative activities) and you are spending all your earned income on products and services to fulfil them (take away, new gadgets, household services, nursery, Netflix). What happen to the broken, what happened to the packaged, what happened to the children that do not spend time with their parents?
- Consider the impact of work-centred society on your own health and wellbeing. Look, You may be tired and exhausted, you may be stressed, your back may hurt and your eyes may twitch. People around you and self-help books may ask of you to find a better work-life balance, Maybe you should ask everyone why we do not collectively ask for reduced hours of work.
- Get in touch with those who are already living a life more in tune with their body and their breathing, their surrounding environment and their community.
- Ask yourself why you should be grateful for having a 40hour a week job, with 1-hour commute each way, two days for resting and 5 weeks holidays of work. Question the culture of gratitude and begin a process of entitlement by asking for what you need.
- Give yourself and others the opportunity to dream for different worlds and utopias where you have the freedom and autonomy to design your own life with no structural and social pre-settings.
Graham & Thrift Out of Order
there is different way the article canbe quite useful within the thesis.
First, in indicating that repair provide an opportunity for the being to actually learn and develop oneself through a process of innovation, indicating there and then that repair is the premist of innovation, it is when soemthing break that theindividual tend to develop himself by trying to find way to repair the item
Second, that repair processes that happen in citieiss and in everyday life tend to be hidden from mot people who cannot see it happenign by reading report or hearing report when they are actually happening. people can only foresee the item as well when the alter is broken, when it works they cannot actualyy xsee the item but only focus on its function.
there is all the chapter about e-waste at the end that shows the extent to which the lack of engagement of repair create a number of negative externalities.
thereis also the way repairer are perceived by society as low class people.
then we have the all chapter about E-waste
Ackerman design for product care
In the paper by ackerman, the main intention is to delineate the research project. She decided to look at product care and define the motivation to take care of a range of products. She set her research within the content of the xircular ecinomic since it is put forward that we shall actually they to repair the items first and she put forward that by understand g the user we will be able to actually develop design interventions between the user and the product.
There is a few thing that i can take from it first the way she presented the liner ecinomic in my introduction.
Then the way she actually put forward the definition of product care. It will Help me to define appropriately how i differentiate my research from her.
I will definitely have to put her research within repair as a strategy as well as design interventions to repair.
There is also an elements within my discussion that i need to put forward in relation to design for sustainable behaviour that we shall not only look at the interaction between the user and the product bit also consider within the development of our solution, the interaction within a set community.
Leicester Fixers focuses on feeling successful and invite others to do the same - A wink to Eric Barker Book - Barking up The Wrong Tree.
a supporter asks me after listening to the show,
why we are not getting paid for what we do?
Mobile Phone, Joy & Pain
Calling texting, messaging, twitting, facebooking, youtubing, whatsapping, deezering...
But it can be also a real source of frustation and suffering AKA Pain
First, your phone cannot stop fidgeting and tweeting like a bird...
It is not in a tree doing so.
It is on your lap and all it wants is to be soothed.
What a great source of distraction to be all the time connected to this devil child.
The other thing, it bugs and freezes when it decides to reject your attention. What a chocolate?
I found myself starting an application, the latter closed as if my phone did not want to speak to me.
One day, I decided to remove Facebook. My phone started to misbehave.
I decided to remove it because I do not like the idea that they can log what I am browsing online through my device (read carefully details when updating the app on your phone, you will be surprised).
When disablong the app, a message appeared saying that some applications will misbehave if I disable facebook as it is an inbuilt app of my phone.
I felt trapped by facebook and android as a whole.
So to avoid any such pain, sing for yourself, connect with people for real and get a phone that just call and text, it will reduce the suffering :p
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