We have made the decision to run Fixfest UK as a series of online only events. Planning for these is still underway, but they are likely to run from the end of May into early July. We will be announcing more details soon.
This means we will no longer be meeting in person in Glasgow. Please do not book any travel or accommodation. If you have already made bookings, do try to ask for refunds.
Why online?
Given the current coronavirus pandemic is ongoing, we’re not sure when large gatherings or movement across the country will be safe again. While we hope the situation will have improved by June, there is just too much uncertainty and we don’t want to have to cancel or scramble to move everything online at the last minute. Instead, we want to use the next couple of months to focus on how we can best bring everyone together remotely.
Why a series of events?
We don’t think an all-day online event would work very well. A few of the team here at Restart recently sat through a 7-hour online meeting, which was pretty mind-numbing despite its interesting content. We’d like to make the most of the flexibility that online events bring by splitting presentations, discussions and workshops over a number of sessions. The hope is that we can avoid frying everyone’s attention spans and that more people will be able to come along.
Want to come along?
If you haven’t already, you can still register your interest here: Register your interest
We’ll keep this topic updated with all the latest, so stay tuned
So this is what we have in mind… Max of 6 weekly participatory presentations, discussions and workshops (45-90min in length) from mid May through the end of June.
Please let us know what schedules suit you best to attend these
Choose as many as are ok with you
Weekday late afternoon (4:30-6:30pm)
Weekday evening (8-10pm)
Saturday morning
Saturday afternoon
Sunday morning
Sunday afternoon
Sunday evening
0voters
Proposed sessions - propose yours!
We’re proposing 3 topics, partly based on the interactions we’ve had online and off with members of the network
Right to Repair in the UK (topics to cover: making the Manchester Declaration come alive, Brexit, bringing it to community events, using our data)
Repair data (how do we collect it? why do we collect it? how best to share it? and what about participant feedback)
Becoming a decentralised network with regional anchor groups (how do we maintain autonomy and local flavour but work together? What can we work together on? Funding? Avoiding duplication of efforts?)
That leaves room for three other workshop topics proposed by you, the community! Take a look at Fixfest UK 2018 for a notion of how open the programme is. Please respond in this thread with your ideas.
Date saved… Sessions? related to 1 in your list. How do we engage more widely and build a broader community (eg schools, colleges, other active groups, new or different local community groups and media)
I’m thinking of proposing a codesign workshop explore repair and reuse in cities (considering naturally what changes with COVID-19). It would be very valuable for my research. The only caveat is that I would need participants to fill a separate consent form. Would that be too annoying?
Even if that’s OK, I still need to work out some details and see whether I can get approval from my Uni’s ethics committee on time.
How about some kind of session based on Repair Sessions during lockdown. I can’t see how we’re going to be able to start up Repair Cafes again this year, and with sharing skills being key to our reason for being, how do we go forward? I know there was a session on this before, but couldn’t make it with timings, and can’t find any recordings of it.
Here are some ideas we’re working on for the remaining sessions, based on your input:
Sewing machines, a hands-on session on maintenance, trouble-shooting and fixing (a redux of an event hosted by @Bridget_Harvey and Cheeky Handmades a couple of years ago. Written up by @philip who might be interested too).
Capacitors (electrolytic ones), an intro to their scandalous common failure and how to replace them (@Chris_Moller interested?)
Online events and organising during the pandemic (@Clare_Seek’s suggestion)
Reuse and repair in urban areas @Felipe_Fonseca (potentially with people from reuse orgs like remakeries or tool libraries? @Lorna_Montgomery interested?)
Lightning Talks - 5 minutes to share or talk about anything. We could fit about 8-9 of these in one session
Hello! Sorry we have not been in touch. We have furloughed ourselves, but are stll interested in participating in some way. Most likely that would be our volunteer team getting involved.
I can see there are the most votes for Weekday Evening slots 8:30-10:00. I can’t speak for others, but this time is not suitable for me as it is bedtime for our wee one.
Ok, so! We’re just sorting out some tech and design issues but here is the tentative schedule and list of sessions. Note there is still an open session for the taking!
Please get in touch if you are interested in helping to shape and run one of these sessions, and please let us know if you are going to be super disappointed about a scheduling conflict. We did our best based on the poll above.
Keynote and Right to Repair in the UK, Thursday 4 June @ 8pm
Quality Online Engagement with Adult Learners, Thursday 11 June @ 8pm
The Scandal of Faulty Capacitors, Saturday 13 June @ 11am
Community repair in the UK: strengthening a decentralised network, Thursday 18 June @ 8pm
Saturday morning social! Saturday 20 June @ 11am
Reuse and repair in urban environments TBC Thursday 25 June @ 8pm
Sewing Machines: Maintenance and Repair Saturday 27 June @ 11am
Lightning Talks, Demos, Show ‘n’ Tell Thursday 2 July @ 8pm
Open session - for the taking! Saturday 4 July @ 11am
Closing session: Our repair data - how and why we collect it Thursday 9 July @ 8pm
Hi everyone! Just saw these dates announced on the fb group with @Melina_Scioli and @Club_de_Reparadores Argentina & Uruguay we are having our first online event on June 6th !
We will be live streaming on youtube a little première of three short documentaries on repairers, we are launching our brand new, first-prototype of our directory of repairers, Reparar.org, we are exchanging practices on holding independent events with teams from Uruguay and Mexico (and possible ReparaLab from Chile), and we are also having some tutorials via zoom (which won’t be open stream). We’ll confirm more details soon and publish flyers in the next couple of days, but I love that the date overlaps with your programme… do you think we can create some synergy with the communication? like a cross-continent fixfest of some sort?
Sounds like a really cool idea! Can you send us some dates/times? Obviously in terms of times, if you had an event in the afternoon we could join in the evening.
I’m sure we have a handful of Spanish speakers among us, but it would be cool to arrange for one of your English-speaking team to narrate or help us follow along in English. Or perhaps there is some simultaneous machine translation solution?
Fixfest UK 2020 is moving online
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