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Restart Project is a charitable incorporated organisation based in London with the main aim  ''to tackle the climate emergency by making electronics work for people, for the planet, and for longer.'' I first engaged with the Restart Project in 2015. My collaborator and I were looking for some inspiration on how to run a repair event, so we could start Leicester Fixers. We went all the way to Hackney to attend an event and meet some of the people from the Restart Project. Over the years supporting the idea of repair in Leicester and Leicestershire, Leicester Fixers came down to London at Westminster to support and participate in a Parlimentary Restart Party in 2016. More in the podcast episode  here . We also attended FixFest 2017 in London , FixFest UK 2018 in Manchester and Fixfest 2019 in Berlin .

What happened this week? I published many resources online for people to pick upon and disseminate.  Our Quetzal Stories of Change event and the list of artists and organisations who will display at the event is on Quetzal Website . On Monday I will send the invitations to all and disseminate across the stratosphere. I also shared the results of our community discussion on what we can do to raise awareness in BAME communities about the trauma of childhood sexual abuse. I had a great meeting with the team if Let's talk about sexual violence about creating a bigger impacts with their exhibition both in Leicester and Liverpool by paying to a pot of fundings and determining some key activities. Watch this space! I had a great conversation with a funder about the questions to ask oneself when applying fundings . To give you a bit of a back story, I applied for some funding to tour the exhibition in Leicestershire. We received only part of the funding to support with our counselling act...

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,...

Leicester Fixers   received an invitation to join 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?  

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 A meeting will be organised to discuss some of the elements with people working together to repair and mend items.

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 How can you connect with Leicester Fixers FB Group Instagram Restarters Footpa...

Leicester Fixers is in the process of redefining its vision, mission, values, as well as its delivery focus and operations. Here is what they drafted so far and we are looking for feedback, please comment: Our vision is To make repair always the best, easiest, cheapest option for citizens and their broken items in Leicester Their mission is  To empower individuals and organisations to repair and mend in Leicester  Their objectives Reduce Carbon Emissions  Increase number of items repaired Improve Communities Connection and Wellbeing Improve Individual and Community Training Achieve Financial Sustainability Their Values 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 What do you think? There is definitely more work to do on this - It is the first draft - Looking forward to hearing your thoughts Email LeicesterFixers[at]Gmail.com

Leicester  Fixers won some time ago a £500 voucher to get tools from Ifixit . It was a thrilling gift to receive. This week, I moved forward in defining the toolkit we will order by making some enquiries to Loughborough Fixers as well as Leicester Fixers . Thanks to those who came back to me, I will study your reply and make an order. Even though, there is no plan as such to have any repair event in Leicester in the upcoming year, Thinking about it is a start in possibly doing something about it.  I also had a discussion with Durgha from Flow Finder about her coaching consultancy services I am considering to use to support Leicester Fixers. She suggested for me to restart our newsletter updating our mailing list about our activities and gather a bit energy there.  About my personal repair, I returned to Woodgate Computer this week to fetch a data stick and bring some mobile phone. I had four in total. Amongst the four, they took three to give me a quote. Amongst the th...

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...

This is the workshop you need to attend if you are involved with communities. It is the ABCD you need to promote Citizen Participation at a neighbourhood level. It is a two day workshop, hosted by Cormac Russell, exploring asset Based Community Development and Sarah Burns (Head of Communities) from Croydon Voluntary Action. 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...

IT IS TIME FOR EVERYONE TO JOIN  Market Harborough Fixers  specifically if you live in and around Market Harborough, have an item to fix, have the skill to fix, have the dream that one day every single town and villages have a repair café every month! Share this post with your contacts in Leicestershire Yesterday, Divya and I travelled from Leicester to  Canvas Cafe  in Great Oxendon, approximately 2 Miles Away from Market Harborough. We were welcomed by Lara and Jen who run the Canvas Café and the  Country Bumpkin Yurts  and Steven who is running a food growing project on site to support people with mental health issues. He is also involved in a number of projects in the area. I brought a projector from the  Leicester Hackspace , yet it was easily figured that a lovely conversation around a cup of tea was more appropriate. We received pertinent questions when it comes to trying to organise a repair café, the possible footfalls, how to mana...

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 ...

A microwave is such a handy tool, so convenient, It warms the food in a blink of 1min30s. Every worker wants a microwave. It is 7.30pm, you arrive finally at home.  The bus commute from your work office to the confine of your living room took an hour.  You are exhausted.  Sitting down in front of the computer all day wore you out.  You are starved. Your belly is rumbling. You need food it is a matter of survival. Hopefully, your level of organisation has paid off.  You have food in the fridge.  Thanks to your to-do-list called ''Get Ready For Work''. On Sunday, you prepared a week worth of dishes to keep you going.  They are all in beautifully compact Tupperware you bought in your favourite or closest super shop. You open the fridge door, you take one Tupperware, close the fridge door, take your favourite bowl on the drying rack, open the Tupperware, pour the content in.  A warm feeling wraps up your hear...

The world is bound to go to entropy.  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 bot...

This weekend, I read 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 o...

In the article put forward by Graham & Thrift, he strive to put  forward that repair and maintenance is the central component of the development of economies. and a basis of our survival 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 ...

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 lo...

Recently, I was on BBC Radio Leicester on behalf of Leicester Fixers to make a call out to communities across Leicestershire. We have plans to support them with setting up their own repair events and be as successful as we. Thanks to Ben Jackson and its team for inviting us on the show to share our voice. Y ou can catch me on iPlayer at this link from 1hr42mins to 1hr50mins into the programme.   With 26 events under our belt and our successes in changing people perspectives, a supporter asks me after listening to the show, w hy we are not getting paid for what we do? Yes, the return on investment in monetary term is currently elusive. Hopefully, there are other ways to measure success. I came across Eric Barker book - Barking up The Wrong Tree - where he goes through tonnes of social sciences articles and books to identify measures of success. He suggests focussing on the feelings of being successful because it could take a while, a long time befor...

The plan.