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