How to use the media for outreach and repair education - with Isabel (Exhibition space)

When & where?

:clock2: 14:00-14:45
:compass: Exhibition space

Why you should come to this session

At Restart, we regularly run Restart’s Radio :radio:, where we talk about repair and our relationship with electronics. If you are thinking of getting started with media to promote repair, or if you are using some platform already, this session will be a space to exchange ideas and practices. It will be an interactive session, all of us will participate to design our dreamy media platform to shout about repair.

Session outline

1. Creating your own media platform
We will brainstorm to design your perfect media platform for repair education, going through:

  • Purpose. WHY will you create your platform? What’s your message?
  • Content. WHAT will you talk about? Through what channels?
  • Resources. HOW will you make it happen?

2. Reaching out to local media to promote your repair-related work? @Marie_Lefebvre?

About the facilitator(s)

@isabel is The Restart Project’s communications assistant and helps run Restart’s Radio, both a live radio show and podcast.

Help us document this session!

This is a wiki post, meaning anyone can edit it by clicking on the ‘Edit’ button at the bottom of this post: Edit%20button . Feel free to make edits and add your own notes :wink:

We brainstormed about…

Why using media?

  • Transmitting values like ‘we hate waste’ or ‘we care about the things we own’
  • Promoting repair e.g. sharing repair memories or getting participants to share their fixes
  • Engaging with special weeks or events (e.g. Repair Day)
  • Maintaining your community (one group shared that as soon as they stopped their activity on social media the numbers of event participants dropped dramatically)
  • Linking communities, engaging with similar organisations
  • Supporting volunteers e.g. access to info and sharing skills like how to use tools
  • Media can be a space for creativity
  • Documentation (‘the museum of repair’): tracking impact for posterity, and for targets

How to use media to increase visibility and participation at events

  • Have a figurehead who can be social about events and attract more participants
  • Network with similar organisations and promote each others’ work
  • Engage with students groups in the area
  • Get help from venues to promote your events
  • Promoting your events on radio/other media platforms you use
  • Also on local media (radio or press)
  • Stay active on your social media channels
  • But also offline: posters, word of mouth

Barriers

  • Maintaining social media can be hard for small groups. Option of recruiting volunteers but it can be too much work
  • What media platforms? And the balance between online vs offline?
  • Hard to get the local press interested

You’re also welcome to leave comments below to help us document the session, e.g.:

  • what happened in the session?
  • what did you learn or find interesting?
  • who did you talk to and did any actions come out of the conversation?

Perhaps @Marie_Lefebvre could help co-host this session, @isabel? She’s done an amazing job of cultivating local media contacts in Leicester.

Hello, I am happy to help @isabel and share how we have managed to get local media involved.

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