I sent the following request after several requests at the latest Hackney Restarters event from attendees. Your enquiry
what seems to be missing is any basic training in repairing your own items especially electric or electronic repairs. people need to go through a step from wanting to know how to, to learning how, before they attend repair parties as a fixer. is it possible that the NLWA would provide some funds to set up a group of friends who want to learn, but can find no such groups in north london and no educational courses at schools either day or night (unless they intend to work in the industry)?
AND I received the following reply from the North London Waste Authority which basically says they will do nothing.
Hi Stephen,
I’m sorry to hear that you have not found my response very helpful. Other than the Waste Prevention Community fund, NLWA does not offer any other funding to support other initiatives such as what you mentioned. Currently the fund is closed **(May 2021) ** with plans for it to be opened end of Autumn 2022, with funding to be awarded in the new financial year.
The Camden fixing factory will allow residents to:
Get their broken products fixed on a ‘donate as you feel’ model
Join repair workshops/1-2-1 learning sessions (including online)
In terms of training/learning how to fix electronics I am not aware of any groups that do this specifically. Other than the two options above we have nothing else to offer for the time being.
Please note that if any other opportunities arise, they will be promoted and advertised on our social media accounts (@connectNLWA).
There’s the Restarters Wiki, which contains a wealth of info. Apart from that, the best way to learn is to come as a fixer and buddy with someone more experienced. No course could cover more than a fraction of what you might meet as a fixer, or even all the faults on any type of device you might have been trained on. The way to learn is to start off with a basic understanding of electricity (see the Wiki) then just dive in with your screwdriver, plundering the Wiki and Google for ideas whenever (often) you run out of your own.
It most certainly isn’t empty! Last time I did a word count I think it came to the equivalent of a decent sized novel! It’s all publicly readable, and since you’re a registered Restarter you can edit it (though your edits will initially be moderated).
Click the Wiki link at the top of any Restarters page and you should get to the main page, unless there’s some temporary technical glitch.
Just to add to what Philip said, it looks like you were looking at one of the special log pages on the wiki. If you follow Philip’s instructions (or click here), you should find all the content (which is visible whether or not you’re logged in)
I think it is badly organised, To find anything in search (where you first start) you HAVE TO PUT IN SOMETHING, I used the common word “The”.
The Wiki start should be this link Restarters Wiki
For people who want to learn this a is a good start page Where to Start
An Index of pages would be better if you assumed no knowledge!
The main page (where you start) is organised topically (if you scroll down just a bit) to allow you to see the range of info available and to drill down according to your fancy. This seems to work better than Search, which can give a lot of irelevant hits (don’t blame us for that - not our software, but the software which powers Wikipedia) and better than a simple list of pages, currently numbering a little short of 150.
But congratulations on finding the Where to start page - I only started writing that page this morning! It’s still work in progress and so not yet linked to from the main page. We’d been discussing adding such a page for a little while and it’d just about got to the top of my to-do list when you opened this thread!
I (via Camden Fixing Factory) now have some regular contact with NLWA, and as their Autumn funding round is coming round it might be worth seeing how they can support this: helping people train in repair should fit neatly into ‘waste prevention’ after all
Already tried that, this was the reply
I’m sorry to hear that you have not found my response very helpful. Other than the Waste Prevention Community fund, NLWA does not offer any other funding to support other initiatives such as what you mentioned. Currently the fund is closed with plans for it to be opened end of Autumn 2022, with funding to be awarded in the new financial year.
The Camden fixing factory will allow residents to:
Get their broken products fixed on a ‘donate as you feel’ model
In terms of training/learning how to fix electronics I am not aware of any groups that do this specifically. Other than the two options above we have nothing else to offer for the time being.
Please note that if any other opportunities arise, they will be promoted and advertised on our social media accounts (@connectNLWA).
