About

Repair Matters is a Vancouver-based initiative that empowers people to take part in repair and creative problem solving. Our aim is to bring people with different skill sets and experiences together, ranging from novices to experts, to share knowledge and collectively troubleshoot repair solutions.

Repair inspires your creativity. The act of repairing something is a great way to build creative confidence in all of us. A broken item can be fixed using different means and methods – we think there’s more than one way to repair most objects, so let’s put our brains to work and get our hands dirty!

Repair connects you to people. Repair does more than keep waste out of the landfill. It creates connections between different people within a city and allows knowledge to be passed on to the next generation. When we share our skills and experiences with each other we help build resilient communities. We believe that repair is an engaging and sustainable way to accomplish this.

Repair saves you money. For many of us it often seems easier to buy a new version of an object when the old one breaks, instead of trying to get the old one repaired. In most cases where an item is broken, it’s worth considering the option of repair and either asking someone for advice or looking it up online or in a book. Oftentimes a repair is both easier and cheaper to perform than what initially might seem to be the case.

THE TEAM

The Repair Matters team consists of four young women who are passionate about reducing waste in Vancouver. Karen Byskov is an Industrial Designer and Jayde Chang is a Communication Designer. They both worked on projects focused around the topic of repair before starting Repair Matters as their grad project at Emily Carr University of Art + Design.

During the inception of Repair Matters grad, they met Jessica Beketa and Shea O’Neil who had also been working on a similar project. WIth an aligned vision and a passion for repair and zero waste we came together to create the Repair Matters team!