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"Repair Movement Reinvigorates Fix-It Culture"

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cdev:
https://appvoices.org/2020/07/21/repair-movement-reinvigorates-fix-it-culture/

This is an excerpt from an article on the Appalachian Voice web site about a positive repair and education movement in the Southeast of the US that seems to have been put into limbo by the Coronavirus epidemic.


Repair Communities


Members of the Repair Hub in Boone, N.C., helped to sew items brought in at monthly events pre-COVID-19. Photo courtesy of Repair Hub

One of these groups is the Repair Hub in Boone, N.C. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Repair Hub community hosted events each month where members of the public bring items to volunteers who help repair them for an optional donation. Andy Groothuis, who founded the Repair Hub in 2019, says the repair process involves aspects of reducing and reusing which, he says, “are two sides [of the ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ waste hierarchy] that are usually, I find, overlooked.”
Groothuis states that when people have broken items, they either dump them in a drawer with the intention of fixing it “one day,” or, more often than not, he says, “they are going to throw them out, and that item probably could have been used.”

Similarly, the Cville TimeBank Repair Café in Charlottesville, Va., which started in 2015, hosts public events twice a year where participants can bring up to three items to be repaired for free. The president of the Repair Cafe, Kathy Kildea, says Repair Café is a community tool that gives people access to skills such as electrical work and sewing that they may not have the resources to access on their own.

Kildea says the project is about “utilizing those skills you have at your doorstep.”

One of the focuses of the Cville TimeBank Repair Cafe is education. People bringing in items are encouraged to sit with the “fixers” and watch repairs as they take place. There is also a “kids’ take-apart table,” where kids get to explore the inner-workings of items. These interactions foster curiosity and enable people to fix future goods that may break.

“If you think any repair is beyond your means or beyond your ability, you’re kind of sunk,” Kildea says. “But if you come at it from the point of, ‘Well, there’s just a piece in here that’s not functioning properly, I just need to figure out which one it is.’ Fostering that sense of curiosity is important not just for the kid, but for any customer that comes in with something they want to get fixed.”

eti:
That people need TELLING this, and that the ones telling them think this is a "movement", makes me cringe, and also laugh at how dumb the world now is.

SerieZ:
I find it rather cute more so than than cringe to be honest.

bsfeechannel:
If it has a manifesto, it is a movement.



cdev:
We do need to make being a maker and recycler natural for people.

To invent, save money, repair and reuse.
And avoid the future depicted in Wall-e.

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