Originally published at: https://therestartproject.org/news/were-opening-two-new-fixing-factories-in-barking-and-victoria/
We’re once again joining forces with Possible to open two new Fixing Factories in London! In fact, the new Barking location launched today. We celebrated with Councillor Miraj Patel, who joined us to cut the ribbon, and partners, local organisations and volunteers alike including, representatives from East London Waste Authority and Material Focus.
We’ve learnt an awful lot from our first four locations and we’ll be employing all of that knowledge at these new spots but also, we’ll be trying something a little different. Both of these locations are of course, thanks to funding from the National Lottery Community Fund.
So what are we doing differently this time?
At the new Fixing Factories, we’re using a more scaled back approach. This is because it’s part of our mission for the Fixing Factory concept to be replicable and scalable, so we’re trying a new model. The new sites will be based in Westminster and Barking and instead of being standalone spaces, they will be embedded into buildings where existing repair and reuse initiatives are already in place. Because of this, we’re especially excited for the opportunity to collaborate with these other organisations and really embed our projects into a flourishing repair ecosystem.
We’ll also only have one Workshop Manager overseeing both of these sites and our programme of activities — while still ambitious — will be reduced. We’ll still be holding Weekly Community Repair sessions at both sites which we foresee being just as popular as the incredibly busy sessions we see in Hackney. Additionally, we’ll have fortnightly repair skills workshops and repair clubs. Later on, we’ll potentially find capacity to expand the resale work that we’ve been doing in Hackney to the Barking site. We especially hope that we’ll be able to support volunteers to take real ownership of the activities and space at these new locations, enabling us to continue the model in the future.
Our new locations
Barking Fixing Factory officially launched today (20th March) and will open to the public on the 27th. It’s one of over 70 UK pilots funded by Material Focus and is supported by the East London Waste Authority, Barking & Dagenham Council and The National Lottery Community Fund. Really excitingly, it will be located at the Sew London Project, an existing textiles repair initiative operating in the borough.
Although some activities have already started (we just couldn’t wait!), Victoria Fixing Factory will launch officially on 4th April. It will be located at Victoria Library as part of the Victoria Library Mini Hub programme and supported by The National Lottery Community Fund.
We’re so excited to welcome you to these new locations and hope that the local community will get stuck in and take full advantage of our range of activities. As always, if you want to get involved as a volunteer or simply learn more about it, you can hear from current volunteers here. Or just pop on by to one of the new locations once they’re open to the public!
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