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 projects main works, we made a short publication titled "Tales of Care & Repair, Everyday Maintenance", which was launched on 28th Feb, 2022 at the Watershed, Bristol. The work was also presented as part of the British Councils (project funders): Creative Commissions, City of London street exhibition (2021) and Open Eye, Photography Gallery's, Climate Lab programme in 13th Jan-20th March 2022.

Full details of this project and its extensive workshop programme can be found here: TALES OF CARE & REPAIR.

Background

The seeds for TALES OF CARE AND REPAIR were established during our first network workshops, where we asked participants to bring objects that represented repairing and mending. These objects lead to sharing stories about motivations and reasons for mending, which often uncovered deeply rooted values and relations.

Building on this sentiment, we invited Toxics Link in India and Gambiologia in Brazil to work with us on a project that aimed to collect hundreds of stories of everyday repair, as part of British Council, Creative Commissions for COP 26.

When and How

The projects core activities took place across 2021 and Spring 2022 and to support the gathering of the stories a number of online conversations, local workshops and interviews with local repairers. We developed our first online archive and story gathering system, which allowed people to upload a picture of what they had repaired and tag it with details, such as how they repaired it, whether they did it themselves or they hired a professional, how much the repair cost and what their motivations were for repairing it. Through our workshop programme we also piloted our approach to co-creating local "Repair Declarations" that is, a set of intentions that can act as a means towards collectively reimagining how we can move towards more restorative futures.

With a focus on the cities of Bristol, New Delhi and Belo Horizonte the core outcomes of the project included the gathering of over 700 stories, which were tagged with details, which enabled us to build a picture of the duration, cost and motivations people have for repairing objects.

The work developed as part of TALES AND CARE REPAIR and My Square Mile, shaped the nature of the methods explored as part of Repair Acts, Ireland. Across these projects we have not gathered over a thousand stories of everyday repair, which collectively inform what we describe as the 'People's Archive of Everyday Repair'.

Who was involved

Partners: TALES OF CARE & REPAIR was led by REPAIR ACTS at the University of the West of England (School of Art and Design and Digital Cultures Research Centre/DCRC) in collaboration with Toxics Link, India and Gambiologia, Brazil.

Funders: The project was supported by the British Council's Creative Commissions programme – a series of creative commissions exploring climate change through art, science and digital technology.