Repair Acts

International Repair Day, 2025

18.10.2025

Full programme download here: International Repair Day, Bristol, 2025-Repair ActsFREE MENDING & FIXING WORKSHOPS // SPECIALIST & EXPERT REPAIR ADVICE // EVENTS // TALKS // SCREENINGS.Workshops (drop-in) T-Shirt Reuse. Lead by: Jan Coles. Turn old T-shirts into useful yarn. Location: Outside RepairiumPatch It! Lead by: Dawn Giles. Create a patch and make a statement about the power of repair. Location: Outside RepairiumTake-apart Tech Table. Lead by: Sustainable Hive. Guided hands-on exploration of what's inside our tech. Location: Outside Department of DiscoveryEnd of 10. Lead by: Repa…

Bristol Repair Coalition

Fostering regenerative material cultures in the city through experimentation, play, and action, The Bristol Repair Coalition is an alliance of Bristol-based academics, charities, council members, commercial businesses, social enterprises, craft and artisan practitioners, and independent bodies, all working together to enhance the city's cultures of repair, care, and maintenance.Formed in March 2024 by Repair Acts, the Coalition aims to build capacities to reimagine material pathways throughout the city by expanding existing offerings and supporting emerging communities of professional, commerc…

Caring for Repairing

Dates

03.11.2022 – 06.11.2022

Place

Kilbeggan, Ireland

Collaborators Prof Teresa Dillon

“Caring for Repairing” was held in Kilbeggan (2022), which is small town located in the midlands of Westmeath, Ireland. The exhibition and festival/féile programme emerged from an intensive year, long project Repair Acts, Ireland that was carried out in collaboration with with Dr. Alma Clavin, Department of Geography, University College Dublin, Westmeath County Council and a team of researchers, architects, artists, designers and community partners, including Men Shed, Mullingar.Key activities included the launch of a “Repair Declaration” for the county with an accompanying debate that brought…

Turning the Collar

Reflecting on our material relations with objects, through processes of fixing and mending. 'Turning the Collar' narrates a journey around the midland's county of Westmeath, where twenty craft, restoration, and repair professionals speak about their work. Touching on the values that underpin what we choose to care for and mend, the documentary highlights the poetic and situated nature of craft-based work and the joys and struggles that skilled trade professions face. Closing reflections speak to planned obsolescence, the global Right to Repair movement and associated changes in law and legisla…

Beyond Critique to Repair

Dates

13.07.2022 – 14.07.2022

Place

London School of Economics

JUST AI (Joining Up Society and Technology in AI) is an open research network that identifies issues and intervenes in data and AI ethics.Lead by Dr Alison Powell, Associate Professor in Media and Communications at the London School of Economics (LSE) and established in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The programme was initially supported by the Ada Lovelace Institute, the programme developed as a response to the narrowness of dominant frameworks in data and AI ethics research.JUST AI addresses how high-level ethical principles popularly used to so…

Handles for Care (v1). Conversational Formats for Restorative Futures.

Handle With Care (v.1)

How can we host conversations about restorative futures? What aids do we need in order to discuss possibilities and ideas?‘Handle With Care’ began as a workshop and experiment at No School, France (04.06-10.06-2022). Taking the format of a deck of cards as a starting point, participants were asked to come up with barriers, excuses, work arounds and solutions to stimulating repair-mind sets. These ideas were then collated into different thematics, which became the four suits.The first version card deck was produced in collaboration with Cliona Harney, David Miller (graphic layout, code), Dez Mi…

Tales of Care and Repair, Closing Symposium, Chloé Mikolajczak, Right to Repair European Campaign, 2022

Online Symposium: Tales of Care and Repair

Dates

08.11.2021 – 09.11.2021

Place

Online

Over the 8th and 9th of November, we celebrated the wrap up of the TALES OF CARE & REPAIR project, which also coincided with the second week of COP 26, (26th United Nations Climate Change conference), in Glasgow, Scotland, which ran from 31 October and 12 November 2021.Sharing our learnings, views, stories, declarations and journey over the last 10 months (Feb-Nov 2021), we brought together collaborators, colleagues, project partners and inspiring repair practitioners, scholars, designers, makers and menders from across the global.Event is free but registration necessary via&nb…

Repair Acts, Ireland

Dates

01.11.2021 – 19.12.2022

Place

Ireland

Repair Acts, Ireland took our work into a rural context, specifically the midlands county of Westmeath in Ireland. Drawing on our cartography, declaration and story gathering methods we collaborated with the geographer, Dr. Clavin, University College Dublin and partners Westmeath County Council (Environmental and Heritage Officers and the Public Participation Network), to established and create a year long programme of activities that enabled our approach to become more deeply embedded within a regional, rural context.Working across the county of Westmeath, the first phase of Repair Acts, Irel…

Calling Into The Now

Dates

27.06.2021 – 08.09.2021

Place

Berlin

As humans we celebrate the our life cycles marking them through birth, death and other rites of passage. What potential is there in marking the life cycle of other species in bringing us into a more attentive awareness of our surrounds? A site-based ritual constructed for reeds that surround the Floating University, Berlin. Calling into the Now looks to the role that ritual plays in supporting the ontological shifts necessary to move from human-centered to more earth-bound positions.Situated at the Floating University, Berlin Calling into the Now looks to the role that ritual plays in supporti…

Repair Declarations

Dates

Ongoing

Inspired by the activism and work of the Right to Repair movement, and that of artists who have been thinking about care, repair and maintenance, a key element of our work is the co-design of Repair Declarations with local communities.What are Repair DeclarationsRepair Declarations are statements of intent; they can be aspirational, symbolic or direct statements of action that people can get behind, and which a community, town, village or neighbourhood can use to foster more repair orientated cultures and activate change.A unique aspect of our programme, Repair Declarations are created by crow…

Table Lamp, India. TALES OF CARE AND REPAIR, Repair Acts 2019.

TALES OF CARE & REPAIR

Dates

15.02.2021 – 28.02.2022

Place

Bristol, Belo Horiztone and New Delhi

TALES OF CARE & REPAIR is a crowd-sourced collection of photographs and stories about the objects we repair today from Bristol (UK), Belo Horiztone (Brazil) and New Delhi (India).Alongside the images, we interviewed a number of professional repairers about their work and we began co-creating with various communities what we call local "Repair Declarations". Some of the images and conversations with professional repairers are currently exhibiting at Somerset House, London as part of their exhibition on care, repair and healing, 'Eternally Yours' (16th June-25th Sept 2022).Summarising the pr…

A Eulogy To This Ground

Dates

03.10.2020

Place

Vive les Groues, Paris

What histories does the soil, we stand on hold? What flora and fauna have made it their home, been lost, eradicated or relocated, so that this place, this city can be built? What survived, emerged and took hold between the cracks of such human habitations? A Eulogy To This Ground, takes the form of a situated ritual and tele-sorcery cast. Weaving narratives of lost, forgotten and extinct wildlife, urban sites are transformed into a consecrated places through which the memory for the plants and creatures, who live and once lived in this area can be remembered.Working with structures already pre…

Cleansing Rituals for the Internet

As an infrastructure the Internet plays hosts to a multitude of relations. We utilise its servers, routers and packages for work, play, communication and speculation. Across its pipelines energies and legacies of extraction are held within its fibres. Taking the form of a guided mediation on the histories of the Internet, it’s environmental and colonial footprint, Cleansing Rituals for the Internet, brings attention to such thought lines.and the effort it takes to maintain such global connections.Tubes, lines, pipes, fiber connectors, submarine communication chains, and colonial plumbing circu…

Repair Acts, Godolphin House, Cornwall (2018).

Repair Acts International Workshop 3, Mapping Repair, Penyrn

Dates

14.10.2019 – 15.10.2019

Place

Penryn

Established in 2018, Repair Acts initially took the form of three of three network meetings and workshops with partners in Bristol, New Delhi and Bristol and New Delhi (March 2018 hosted by School of Art and Design and Digital Cultures Research Centre, Bristol and Toxics Link, New Delhi) and Penryn (October 2018 hosted by University of Exeter's Environment and Sustainability Institute). With a closing one-day symposium and month long exhibition at Bristol's centre for sustainability CREATE in March 2019.The programme brought together local, national and international guests working on topics r…

In Your Aerial

Dates

12.03.2019 – 14.05.2019

Place

Bristol

How do we care for infrastructure? How do and why should we care for community infrastructures? How, why and what and for whom, is it necessary to think about the repair, care for and maintain of a wireless community network?Established in the early 2000s, Bristol Wireless is a community network with a unique history and exciting new future. Developed so as to provide free Internet services to schools and community centres across central Bristol. As commercial Internet provision became the norm, the network became a site for community events (radio shows, musical interventions, live streaming …

Repair Acts Exhibition, Bristol

Dates

07.02.2019 – 28.02.2019

Place

Bristol

The Repair Acts Exhibition (2019) emerged from on-going dialogues among members of our first series of activities and meetings (2018-19), as well as early-stage research into the history of repair business in Bristol and prior research on mending practices in the South West of England (My Square Mile). Exhibiting artists include Ravi Agarwal, Teresa Dillon, Arthur Buxton, Carmela Pietrangelo, Ben Gaulon, Anna Mills, Steve Bond, Caitline DeSilvey, Robert (Bob) Leadbeater and Nick Hand.The Repair Acts (2019) exhibition focused on labour practices, the aesthetics of failure, planned obsolescence …

Repair Acts International Symposium, Bristol

Dates

07.02.2019 – 08.02.2019

Place

Bristol

Repair Acts started life as a series events, workshops, meetings and activities over 2018-2019 that brought together a number of people working on topics relating to repair, care, maintenance and reuse cultures. This cumulated in a month long exhibition and one-day symposium that was held and opened on the 7th Feb, 2019 at CREATE, Bristol.Background Repair Acts started life as an international and multidisciplinary network of people working on topics relating to repair, care, maintenance and reuse cultures.Questioning the rhetoric of the 'new' as a means of progression and innovation, our work…

My Square Mile, Screen printed histories of repair adverts, Bristol (2019) by Arthur Buxton. Credit: Teresa Dillon

My Square Mile, Cartographies of Local Repair Economies

Dates

06.02.2019 – 31.03.2019

Place

Bristol

My Square Mile explores and maps local histories of repair economies in the Bedminster area of Bristol, UK.Taking twenty-years slices, archival material from 1938, '58, '78, '98 and 2018 were drawn on as a means to map change across formally registered repair, care and maintenance business and services in the area. This work provided insights into changes in repair, fixing and mending practices. Visual cultures of repair advertisements across these periods of time, were also explored with emphasises on recreating and highlighting particular adverts, including their aesthetics, languages, trade…

Repair Conversations, Penryn

Coordinated by Professor Caitlin De Silvey, in association with the University of Exeter's Environment and Sustainability Institute.Guest speakers included:Stefano Pascucci, ESI Professor in Sustainability and Circular Economy, on 'Community, Circularity and Innovative Practice'Peter Halswell, Falmouth & Penryn Repair Café Chair on 'The First Cornish Repair Café: Origins and Outlooks'.Pop-up mending sessions hosted by the Repair Café team and Francli Craftwear, and an opening of a photography exhibition in the ESI Creative Exchange Studio curated by Steve Bond. This event was hosted by the…

Visible Mending Exhibition, Penryn

Dates

19.10.2018 – 23.11.2018

Place

Penryn

Established in 2018, Repair Acts initially took the form of three of three network meetings and workshops with partners in Bristol, New Delhi and Bristol and New Delhi (March 2018 hosted by School of Art and Design and Digital Cultures Research Centre, Bristol and Toxics Link, New Delhi) and Penryn (October 2018 hosted by University of Exeter's Environment and Sustainability Institute). With a closing one-day symposium and month long exhibition at Bristol's centre for sustainability CREATE in March 2019.The programme brought together local, national and international guests working on topics r…

Repair Acts International Workshop 2, Mapping Repair, New Delhi

Dates

26.03.2018 – 28.03.2018

Place

New Delhi

Established in 2018, Repair Acts initially took the form of three of three network meetings and workshops with partners in Bristol, New Delhi and Bristol and New Delhi (March 2018 hosted by School of Art and Design and Digital Cultures Research Centre, Bristol and Toxics Link, New Delhi) and Penryn (October 2018 hosted by University of Exeter's Environment and Sustainability Institute). With a closing one-day symposium and month long exhibition at Bristol's centre for sustainability CREATE in March 2019.The programme brought together local, national and international guests working on topics r…

Repair Acts, International Meeting 1, Bristol, 13th March 2018. Credit: Artur

Repair Acts International, Network Meeting 1, Mapping Repair, Bristol

Established in 2018, Repair Acts initially took the form of three of three network meetings and workshops with partners in Bristol, New Delhi and Bristol and New Delhi (March 2018 hosted by School of Art and Design and Digital Cultures Research Centre, Bristol and Toxics Link, New Delhi) and Penryn (October 2018 hosted by University of Exeter's Environment and Sustainability Institute). With a closing one-day symposium and month long exhibition at Bristol's centre for sustainability CREATE in March 2019.The programme brought together local, national and international guests working on topics r…