Tag Archives: repair

Support us through Ebay-Patagonia auction

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We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve been chosen to receive proceeds from the online auction connected to the launch of the Ebay and Patagonia Common Threads partnership in the UK.

Common threads

Common Threads is more than just an online storefront/collaboration between Ebay and Patagonia. It is an initiative that aims to boldly change the way we consume.

Participants do not just shop for second hand Patagonia clothes, they sign a pledge to really live the 4 Rs (Reduce, Repair, Reuse and Recycle). Participants pledge to “wrest the full life out of every Patagonia product by buying used when I can, and selling what I no longer wear to keep it in circulation”.

Common Threads has successfully provided a marketplace for Patagonia clothes for reuse, via individual sellers, in the US since 2011 and now it is launching now in the UK.

For the launch, Ebay and Patagonia are sponsoring an auction, with some celebrity items – including a jacket worn by adventurer Ben Fogle – and we’re really excited to have been chosen as the only recipient of funds raised. Continue reading →

A day at the Market

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IMG_1741

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. Continue reading →

Repair Rickshaw Concept

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rickshaw small

Photo remixed from Flickr user sarahandiain on CC license

Since we got started, we have been interested in bringing repair back into public spaces and getting people engaged in a hands-on way. This post is about how we arrived at one of our most exciting concepts.

Last year, we participated in OpenIDEO’s E-Waste Challenge which asked the question: How can we manage e-waste & discarded electronics to safeguard human health & protect our environment?

We had experimented with OpenIDEO earlier but really felt the creative and collaborative power of its global, online collaboration with this challenge. We were interacting with professionals from a number of different fields, and from around the world, on the issue of preventing electronic waste. Now in 2013, we plan to take some of the best ideas from the challenge and prototype them, including mashing two of our favourite concepts together. Continue reading →

The gift of repair

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stuff-breaks-final

Why not give the gift of a simple promise to help a friend or loved one repair something in 2013? You could either include this in a Christmas card, or present it with a gift as a “personal warranty” for the gift, or you could fold up and drop in a stocking.

We’ll be handing these out at our Christmas parties this weekend, Saturday in Belsize and Sunday in Brixton.

Please share, print and use, or get inspired to make your own version. (We’re licensing this Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike)

Download the high-resolution colour version here
Download a high-res version optimised for black & white printing here
Download a high-res version optimised for printing in grey scale here

If you need help finding a repair clinic or café near you, consult our growing global map – “Community (of) Repair”.

Triumphing together against planned obsolescence

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The Epson in question

Moment of triumph over the Epson in question

I am not a technical person.

It may seem strange, being one of the founders of this project, but perhaps that is always what makes me good for this. The technical stuff not only frustrates me – it also really intimidates me, just like most people.

When I first saw The Lightbulb Conspiracy, a documentary about planned obsolescence, I would have never imagined myself battling against one of the featured tricks of printer manufacturers – Epson’s dreaded internal counter/chip. It is an emblem of planned obsolescence, much like the first iPod, where Apple made it impossible to change the battery.

This Saturday, in Willesden Green, a frustrated participant to one of our Restart Parties brought her Epson Stylus D68. She said it died suddenly with no warning and two lights just blinked red and she could no longer print. She had just replaced both ink cartridges.

I did some Googling about her problem and quickly came across a number of people complaining about the dreaded “kill chip”.

Continue reading →

Mapping a spontaneous, global movement

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repairmap

From London, we have been inspired by Holland, the US, Australia, Brazil, and now we realise that there are many more community repair and fixit groups than we ever knew of before… Milan, Barcelona, Finland, the list just grows.

We decided the time has come to visualise this growing movement of repair! Mapping repair groups will help connect people to their local repair gurus and fixit friends – and who knows, inspire the creation of more.

On the site Crowdmap we can collaboratively map the repair movement – if you would like to add a group, simply click “submit report” to add to the map. If you would like to help us curate this map, please get in touch, we would love the help.

Celebrating our half-birthday – December parties!

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Wow, time flies, we look at the calendar and we will have had over a dozen Restart Parties in our six short months of life. We’ve learned tons and met so many great people.

And we’ve had so many “hallelujah” moments – like this one, in our very first Restart Party:

hallelujah merry xmas

We have three events this month, so please get involved.

Let’s get in the repair spirit on the eve of our society’s mid-winter consumer binge!

Continue reading →

#Mozfest pt 1: The politics of making the future

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We attended Mozfest this weekend – and as we still do not even have anything web-related to show (hopefully next year) – we were there to gain inspiration and really push our thinking forward.

The Mozilla Festival is a radically “open” geek paradise, where hundreds of people from around the world came to co-create and share ideas and tools, including online media, gaming, educational tools.

Photo of Joi Ito by Flickr user Paul_Clarke used on a CC license

We left really challenged to build a truly open community (which we will get to in our second post), but we also left with some lingering disquiet with blindspots in the “politics” of the community.

This post is intended to be a contribution to the “writeable” society and intended to start a conversation, so please read on and let us know what you think. Continue reading →

Photos from Swiss Cottage Library

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We had a great turnout at Swiss Cottage Library – the foyer was an excellent space for a Restart Party, we hope to pop-up there again. Thanks to everybody for getting really involved in the repairs, for rolling up your sleeves.

Our repair roll from Brixton was hard to maintain – we had some really tough laptop repairs this time. Some of the repairs we hope to finish in two weeks at the Repair Café at the Goodlife Centre in Southwark/Waterloo.