Restart Podcast Ep 3: Searching for the roots of grassroots innovation

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In this episode, we go in search of some of the historical roots of grassroots innovation in design, tech and resource management at a local level in the UK (and beyond).

Podcaster Dave Pickering interviews Adrian Smith, University of Sussex Professor of Technology and Society, who can help us put our fixing into broader perspective. We learn that community repair is embedded in a larger context of bottom-up responses to economic, ecological and technological change.

Smith describes the Lucas Plan of the late 1970s (check out this documentary for more) and early tech networks formed in London (early 1980s), as well as how recycling started not as a top-down government or corporate sector, but as a community-driven attempt to prevent waste and promote resource efficiency.

We hear from participants at a Restart Party at the Abbey Community Centre in Kilburn (hosted by Transition Kensal to Kilburn) how Restart Parties link with other current community initiatives and reconnect us to objects of personal historical significance.

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