Repair Matters

In early December, we hosted an event at PHSA (Provincial Health Services Authority) as part of their Green Initiatives Program. We came in and facilitated electronics and textiles repairs during the organization’s lunch break. It’s interesting to see more and more organizations developing progressive corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs that encourage employee engagement and positive impact in their community. The best CSR programs are those that are genuine and aim for benefit in their employees and community, and PHSA is doing both! Read More

Repair Story by Maia Rowan
I am currently recovering from a moth infestation. It may sound melodramatic, because it’s only moths, I mean they kind of look like butterflies, not the worst bug around. However it really was an infestation. About three years ago my boyfriend and I got moths. We were living in a big shared house and it’s possible that everyone got moths, but I’m pretty sure we were the only ones who noticed. I made a lame attempt to wash all my clothes and try to keep them separate from anything else in the house. But we certainly didn’t wash everything in the vicinity, and slowly over the last three years they have started to come back.  Read More

A week ago, we set-up at Cedar Cottage Neighbourhood House at 5:30pm and waited for the community to come. For all the events we’ve held, it’s always a question of who will come, what they will bring and whether anyone will come and bring anything at all. The woes of being a new initiative. We were excited to have numerous members from the nearby community come and bring their broken things! To the credit of our talented repair heroes we were able to fix a lamp, sewing machine and troubleshoot a couple personal TVs and bike tire.
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We believe that by engaging more people to be fixers rather than consumers, we can not only reduce the waste that is going into the landfills, but also slow down the current production system. We also see an opportunity for knowledge sharing to occur and sustainable thoughts to be developed. Repair Matters is a systems design that helps to grow and empower the repair community in Vancouver. Adding to the common repair events/workshops where the expert teaches the non-expert, we strive to bring people with different skill sets and experiences together, ranging from novices to experts, to share knowledge and collectively troubleshoot repair solutions. Read More

We think repair is important because it can keep objects out of the landfill. Repair is also an initiator in rethinking our consumption patterns. Everyone we’ve had a chance to talk with through our project work has had a different idea and story about what repair is and can do. We put together some of the key ideas people had in the Repair Matters Manifesto.

The PDF of the poster can be downloaded here.

Communal repair workshops is a great place for people to meet up and troubleshoot repair solutions together. During The Commons event at ECUAD in February, the theme was “Community” and we got the opportunity to set up a space for Repair Matters in the Concourse Gallery. During the one-week event we had an installation on the wall showing examples of repaired objects and various tools that can be used for repairs. On the Tuesday and Thursday we invited people to bring a broken object they had and participate in a repair workshop. The Commons was a great way for us to get valuable feedback on our project. Read More