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A day at the Market

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We had a fun, blustery day at Brixton Market – our first – on Easter Saturday. We have been keen to pop-up in a market, to promote repair “elsewhere”. Our idea is not to take business away from local repairers, but instead to encourage people to repair and reuse in a place where they are receptive to new ideas. So the Give and Take Day organised by Brixton Market was the perfect opportunity.

We were testing donated electronics to assess how broken they were and label them for people to take for free. Stuff that we deemed absolutely end of life and of little value for parts, we left for WEEE disposal.

We have more photos on Facebook.

We tested 30-40 items most of which were snapped up in short order. We learned in Brixton, there are lots of tinkerers who want broken kit for parts.

In future, we would love to have the time and calm to map people’s favourite repair shops, to demo some repairs to interest passers-by, and potentially even feature a local repair hero to promote his or her business.

(Speaking of which, we were happy to meet Steve, The Spin Doctor, one of Brixton’s proud appliance repair men. We’ll be featuring an interview with him soon.)

We’re just getting started with markets, as it warms up. We’ll be at Herne Hill Market on May 19th – please come by or contact us about it.

2 responses

  1. Deepa Pathi

    Hi All!   I note that the Restart Project has tied up with Veolia Environmental Services to promote its Give and Take project at Brixton market.

    I have just signed the petition “Brent Council: exclude Veolia from bidding for any Public Realm contracts” on Change.org because I am against Veolia’s complicity in Israel’s illegal settlement programme.

    It’s important. Will you sign it too? Here’s the link:

    https://www.change.org/petitions/brent-council-exclude-veolia-from-bidding-for-any-public-realm-contracts

    Thanks!   Deepa  

     

  2. Hi Deepa, If we ‘tied up’ with anybody for this event, it was Brixton Market. If anything, we have divergent interests from waste contractors, who get paid per weight for discarded electronics. I’m sure you will be happy to hear that what we do is divert electronics from waste.

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