Skip to main content

Repair - Diary Entry (1) Green Festival of Making & Mending Leicester

Since September 2014, My main project focus has been on repair.

I have been working with Zina, founder of Footpaths, a carbon reduction project in Leicester to organise the Green Festival of Making & Mending on the 31st October 2015 and a serie of events throughout 2015. Our main aim was to introduce people to ingenious ideas to repair and upcycle items in an environmentally friendly way. The event idea stemmed the recognition of our own vulnerabilities. Zina and I were not really the creative/diy type. For me, personally, my hands were only used as so far for typing and some random drawing but never to make something tangible. Maybe they were but I never appreciated their magnificence.

Is gold in our hands?

A year working on festival and following up to that, I mended all my clothes, darned socks and gloves, repaired a mobile phone, made a rag rug and a banner, painted signs, made sculptures out of papers and christmas decorations, repaired pieces of furnitures, shortened curtains.

My hands saved pennies and more...

They connected me to so many people with the skills in Leicester that are willing to share their knowledge and crafts.

I wish they would save the many people across the planet sewing and making clothes and homeware , making furnitures and electrical items everyday for pennies. But the day will come,- I am sure.

To learn more about Footpaths - www.leicesterfootpaths.org.uk










Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Free Speech in the age of identity politics - Welcome back to the future of young days' bullying

The blur is real. When I was young, I was sent every holiday, in one of the toughest neighbourhood in Paris where most children of immigrants can be found, to experience first hand what it means to be a product of your environment. I was bullied not because of the colour I shared with them but what I represented in their mind - the product of a middle-class family. Yes, I was born neither white or black. I identify as mixed race. I was privileged to be raised in a household where your creativity and ingenuity was more prized than any other type of achievement (i.e. education, getting married or making money). The experience made me appreciate even more what was given to me. The experience also forced me to be very selective in what I was allowed to say depending on the people I was with. Social oppression in the age of free speech is just too real when you are young and uneducated. As for now, I am more educated and aware that free speech is one of the foundations of o...
Read more

Why taking a postgraduate loan is not a good idea?

If I could turn back in time, I would not have taken a loan for my master or at least a smaller amount and try my best to work part-time throughout the master so I can pay it off as soon as possible. Taking a loan to study, and then working to repay it, it is the worst social contract you can make with society. I remember writing this in my diary: The alarm goes off. It is 6 o'clock in the morning. I wake up. I feel nice and warm under the blankets and all I wish is if I could stay there a bit longer. Next to me, I can feel the warm body of the man I love. I am on the top of the world. I wish really deeply that I can stay a little bit longer next to him. The alarm goes off again It is 6.10 o'clock in the morning. He gets up. It is too nice under the blankets. I am asking why do I have to get up, get ready, fight the cold, catch the bus, then another bus and finally get to work, stay there for 8 hours and finally come back. I can stay under the blanket ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Exploring Dreams:At the theatre, my favourite part is when the light goes off

At the theatre, my favourite part is when the light goes off. There and then, you know that: ''this is it, you cannot come out''. The configuration is as such that you are stuck with those sitting next to you on a ride. The actors speak to a part too often unknown to ourselves so we can get to see in between their lines the truth. Sometimes, they are so good at their jobs that they send us into a slumber, who knows what happens when we jump into another alternate reality as they continue their ritual. When the show finally ends, it is time to release the actors, ourselves and others from any further attachment to this world of dreams and come back down grounded to planet earth. Over the years, some plays impacted me more than others, Hamlet and King Lear by Shakespeare, Waiting for Godot by Becket, A Respectable Wedding by Brecht, La Baye by Philippe Adrien, Mefiez Vous de La Pierre a Barbe de Ahmed Madani...I was there the spectator, the actor, the confidant...Until I ...
Post a Comment
Read more