Co-created over 2021-22 with over 300 Bristolians contributing, the Repair Declaration for Bristol sets out five ways to strengthen the city’s repair pathways. The first declaration of its kind for a city, it now returns to the table. Join Repair Acts, Teresa Dillon along with makers, academics, designers, artists, cultural and environmental leaders to explore how we can take it forward. Confirmed speakers include: Manu Maungandize, Global Goals Charity; Fiona Dear, CEO Restart; Charlie Eddisford, Community Impact Lead, Resource Futures; Cllr Abi Finch, Bristol City Council & Bristol Green's Party; Kat Corbett, University of Bristol; Professor Laura Fogg-Rogers, University of the West of England; Leigh-Ann Treadwell, founder of Bristol Upholstery Collective; Latinas In Bristol; Clare Reddington, CEO, Watershed; Professor Jeremy Frey, University of Southampton and more.

For the month of October, in Bristol we have curated the programme Celebrating Repair Cultures, a connected, city-wide programme of workshops, talks, performances, exhibitions, conversations, debates and community events. Across the programme bespoke events will be taking place at some of the city's main cultural venues including the SPARKS, CUBE Microplex, Pervasive Media Studio, Arnolfini, community centres, libraries and local hubs.

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: Repair Acts. Support for Microsoft Windows 10 ends this October, we are joining the global effort to provide support to make sure your computer does not become redundant. Location: Nature DepartmentFixy Van. Lead By: Resource Futures. Donate unwanted IT, learning about electronic reuse and repair. Sparks: On BroadmeadRepair Cafe Taster. Lead By: Repairium. Meet volunteers, learn how to get involved, try out small repairs. Sparks: Department of DiscoveryBook-in Session: 11.00AM - 17.00PM Bite-sized Bike Maintenance Workshop. Lead by: Bike Bristol. Hourly Sessions, covering brake and gear adjustment…

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.

“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 multiple key stakeholders together to discuss the future of who the county could become more repair-centred. The world première of our documentary ‘Turning the Collar‘, live music and theatre performances and daily workshops and talks on mending and fixing, that covered topics such as smart agriculture and computer repair, bike mending, creating and fixing a dry stone wall, lace making, toy repair, woodland, bio-diversity and build environment restoration. Repair Acts Ireland, Caring for Repairing, Exhi…

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 legislation.Credits Direction/Narration: Teresa DillonCamera/Editing: Matt BoydSound: Gareth Anton AverillGraphic Inserts: Marta CelioCast (in order of appearance): Meab O'Neill (Meab Enamels, Multyfarnham), David Corrigan, Neil O'Dwyer (O'Dwyers Masonry, Multyfarnham), Olga Corrigan, Declan Browne (Liturgical Book Restorers, Athlone), John Conlon (Thatcher, Glasson), Leo Farrell (The Bike Shop, Mullingar), Paul Dunne (Dunnes Joinery, Kilbeggan), Molly Collins (Pavee Point Traveller and Roma Centre, Dublin), John Joe Quigley (Inner Lakes Marina, Glasson), Giedre Mostova, Mary Garvey (Partners Garment…

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 solve issues in data-driven AI development can ignore the social context and incentives that make technology unjust. JUST AI aimed to increase public engagement and foreground voices of difference in ethical work. ApproachAs part of this generative and exploratory programme, Repair Acts worked with Dr. Powell and colleagues to convene a one-day event “Beyond Critique to Repair” at LSE on the 14th July, 2022, which brought together a number of guest academics, artist and practitioners to think through issues of repair in relation to AI.The workshops focused on mapping and re-mapping how repa…

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 Miller, Gloria Marillier, Ineke Vermeulen, Marie Patsyuk, Mark Osborne (graphics production), McKinley Street (generative illustration), Nica Ross (hand drawn illustration), Nicolas Maigret (graphics production), Supisara Burapachaisri, Tommy Vinh Bui and Weronika Gajda (hand drawn illustrations).At the JUST AI seminar event “Beyond Critique to Repair” on the 14th July, 2022 the deck was used as a bases to expand ideas beyond hardware-focused repair, to explore repairability in the context of artificial intelligence (AI).Currently the card deck is been used and worked in various workshops with l…

The Bristol Repair Declaration (v.1) was co-created by the Repair Acts programme through a series of workshops and events with Bristolians, as part of the Tales of Care and Repair project (2021–22). Four years on, we return to the Declaration at Bristol City Council Chambers on Friday 16 October 2026 from 17.00. Join over 20 makers, academics, designers, artists, cultural and environmental leaders from across the city and the UK to reflect on its progress and explore how we can collectively take it forward.

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 Eventbrite.Documentation of this event, including all online seminars relating to TALES OF CARE & REPAIR  can be accessed via our Vimeo channel.Agenda Day 1: 8th Nov 13.00-13.30: Welcome & Orientation13.30-14.30 Repair Conversation 1: Cartographies of Repair: Josh Lepawsky, Memorial University of Newfoundland & Teresa Dillon, University of the West of England: Moderator, Alma Clavin, University Collage, Dublin14.30-14.45: Break & Online showreel: TALES OF CARE & REPAIR 14.45-15.45: Repair Conversation 2: The Right to Repa…

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, Ireland was funded by Creative Ireland, Creative Climate Action Fund. Over 2023, we will be working to establish the next phase of the project by continuing to work with Westmeath County Council and the councils regional arts officers, galleries, heritage and environment professions.ApproachOver 2022, the first phase of Repair Acts, Ireland included designing and delivering 40 workshops and events, across the region. Working with local communities, repair enthusiast and experts, DIY hobbyists and passionate amateurs to build the "People's Archive of Everyday Repair" that is a contemporary collecti…

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 supporting the ontological shifts necessary to move from human-centered to more earth-bound positions.The Floating University site was originally constructed so as to control of rainwater levels associated with the Tempelhofer Feld in Berlin. Previously an airport, the Feld is now one of the cities most important green recreational spaces. As result of creating the rainwater basin, various species over the years have come to inhabit the area, including a number of reeds, which circumnavigate the site. Addressing the reeds, Call Into the Now looks to how ritual practices can create bridges between huma…

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 crowding sourcing ideas, using various visual,, cross referencing and sense checking methods. This produces a series of statements or demands that when complied together into one document, people can get behind and act on. To date we have created four declarations, which continue to evolve in localities that we are currently working.Background Our declarations build on the work of artists such as Mierle Laderman Ukeles, particularly her Manifesto for Maintenance Art 1969!, the Dutch group Platform21’s Repair Manifesto of 2009, and iFixIt’s similarly titled Repair Manifesto circa 2010. We also…

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 networ…

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 present in the Vive les Groues, urban garden in the Nanterre district of Paris, the garden's yurt was transformed was paired down and transformed into a mediative space. Within the centre a pyre of plants taken from the garden, including Alfalfa, Clover, Fennel, Yarrow, Alinte and Japanese Knotweed, Basil was created. Around which kneeling stools were placed, with three screens looping a video in which images of the Alfalfa plant disappeared. Interjecting this image, a live performance was streamed in which a story about the history garden of the soil through the ages was retold.Opening/premiere:…

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 circumnavigate the globe. Copper wires  wrapped in the latex juices of the gutta-percha tree. Scouring barnacles from its back, a whale gets entangled in the line. The Amber Witch, a cable repair ship, is deployed to the Persian Gulf to investigate. There are dual landing points, forked ocean paths arranged in self-healing rings, backups for increasing network redundancy. What stories do infrastructures hold; those that support our exchange and communication? What is the price for maintaining this interconnected global network? Casting telecommunications spells, we activate our collective imag…

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 relating to repair, care and maintenance cultures. Broadly these cultures focus on applied, artistic, scholarly and civic practices, which deal with the care, upkeep, maintenance and reuse of objects, materials, buildings, systems and processes.The programme was initially funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), UK under the Network grant scheme and led by Professor of City Futures, Teresa Dillon in collaboration within Professor Caitlin DeSilvey and Toxics Link, India.The final part of our 2018 workshop series focused on the craft aspects of our CECE – Critical, Essential, Cr…

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 experiments). In the last few years, Bristol Wireless in partnership with Professor Benedict Gaster (UWE, Computer Science) and Bristol City Council has also acted as a live test bed for low-powered sensor networks.Run on a volunteer bases the network has now been inherited by a new crew, who are boldly re-imagining how we can radically rethink such network infrastructures -- as sites of repair and care, heritage and learning, artistic inquiry, computational experimentation and the commons.Supporting such visions, students from UWE's undergraduate graphic design class, will showcase their re-i…

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 and the contemporary relevance of tradition, craft and skill. The work collectively reflects on the fragility of the material world and our bounded, physical, entanglements with it. As Elizabeth V. Spelman notes in her book ‘Repair: The Impulse to Restore in a Fragile World’ (2003):“To think about repair requires us to recognize our own failures and imperfections and those of the world we live in…” (p. 138).These imperfections in part, relate to what infrastructure scholar Steven Jackson calls ‘broken world thinking’, whereby life itself is constituted in relation to the care of existing ‘thin…

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 addresses everyday material relations with a focus on tools, devices and the built environment. Examining the implications of current consumption and production patterns, and the broader consequences of our material lives on the environment and other species, we explore issues relating to, for example: planned obsolescence and circular design; labour systems, manufacturing processes, resource limitations and waste; craft practices, qualities and standards; our right to repair; failure and breakdown; and, the care necessary to attend to and maintain systems. Over 2018-2019 these topics were ex…

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 marks and symbols.This work informed part of our first exhibition on repair cultures (2019), which took place at CREATE, Bristol's Centre for Sustainability as part of the closing Repair Acts International Network meeting in Bristol.Background My Square Mile grew out of an interest in documenting local repair practices and economies and the histories of repair business. In relation to consumption patterns, post World War 2 brought many changes from new innovations, household electronics, to the growth of youth and throw-away cultures. It is for this reason that the timeframe 1938-2018 was exp…

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 Environment and Sustainability Institute in partnership with the Repair Acts Network and Falmouth and Penryn Repair Café, as part of International Repair Café Week.

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 relating to repair, care and maintenance cultures. Broadly these cultures focus on applied, artistic, scholarly and civic practices, which deal with the care, upkeep, maintenance and reuse of objects, materials, buildings, systems and processes.The programme was initially funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), UK under the Network grant scheme and led by Professor of City Futures, Teresa Dillon in collaboration within Professor Caitlin DeSilvey and Toxics Link, India.Curated by Steven Bond as part of the Penryn activities, the "Visible Mending" exhibition drew on the previou…

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 relating to repair, care and maintenance cultures.The programme was initially funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), UK under the Network grant scheme and led by Professor of City Futures, Teresa Dillon in collaboration within Professor Caitlin DeSilvey and Toxics Link, India.Addressing critical, essential and economic forms of repair this workshop was the second in a third part series, with a focus broadly on repair, reuse, waste and maintenance cultures in India, namely New Delhi. Alongside mapping areas of knowledge, practice and application, participants worked together …

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 relating to repair, care and maintenance cultures.The programme was initially funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), UK under the Network grant scheme and led by Professor of City Futures, Teresa Dillon in collaboration within Professor Caitlin DeSilvey and Toxics Link, India.Background Established in 2018, the Repair Acts programme was initially established as an international and multidisciplinary network, which brought together people working on topics relating to repair, care and maintenance cultures.Viewing repair, care and maintenance as the challenge to move away from…