The Fixing Factories team at Possible and Restart are interviewing repair groups about how we could help you to set up permanent repair hubs (Fixing Factories) in communities. For example:
Fundraising advice/support
Advice/connections to help you find permanent spaces
Sarah - good initiative. We need more!!
Most âpermanentâ repair hubs (Fixing Factories, Share & Repair etc ) have at least one paid employee. So, information on the best approach to provide this (role spec, contract, funding, recruiting etc) is likely to be useful⌠BW Mark
Thatâs really helpful @Dave thank you! Also (a question I asked Monique): whatâs the format you think people would want that information in? A âhandbookâ, a stack of documents, or more a conversation/ad-hoc support? Weâre wondering if often people donât actually read long handbooks and itâs better to give information in other ways e.g. training sessions or advisory support?
@Sarah_Howden : for tools, thereâs a fairly comprehensive list of tools, test equipment, software, spares and consumables in the Wiki - pretty much everything Iâve needed in 10 years community fixing.
It seems to me that implementing a repair hub is a project with a number of phases. Each phase could form a chapter in a manual. Each phase can be broken into tasks and sub-tasks with times and dependencies that would form the detail in each chapter. It doesnât have to be written in project-management-speak but the techniques in project management are well tried and tested and could inform your approach.
Really interesting to hear that youâre doing this. I run a permanent space in Portsmouth, although like Bathâs project, we run it alongside a Library of Things, and weâre miles off being sustainable. Weâre trying to broaden income streams by having the projects side by side (as well as workshops) to diversify and build resilienceâŚand all of this is with a free space. I have people contact me all the time about how we are doing it, and all the things that you mention are asked of me, alongside org structures, employing people, but finding spaces often seems to be the main stumbling block.
Some questions and considerations arose when I thought about whether a permanent option was suitable for the group I volunteer with.
The types of things that turn up the most at our events are small domestic appliances - lamps, vacuum cleaners, toasters, etc. We also see a fair few laptops, a lot of clothing and a few mobiles and bicycles at our repair events.
The former are things that are not commonly dealt with by repair businesses. However there will often be businesses on and around the high street that repair the latter.
What has been the reaction of repair businesses local to Fixing Factories? Would the local PC repair shop really welcome an outfit that fixes laptops for free? Even if it isnât a free-drop-in-any-day type of service.
Is a Fixing Factory for electronic devices only?
If a group were to transition to a permanent space, might they be giving up mending clothes and fixing bicycles and furniture?
@Clare_Seek mentions the biggest blocker in my area. - affordability of a high street space in an inner London borough. Plus, if we were lucky enough to find one it would probably be a quarter of the size of the event space we use once a month, which would mean a great reduction in the number of tables we could host, currently we get at least a couple of dozen fixers per event. The sewing machines alone wouldnât all fit in the Camden FF. Iâve seen that they put tables out in the street to become part of the market and that works for them, but not necessarily an option everywhere - and what do they do when it rains?
I suppose itâs a case of considering the pros and cons for each group and situation. It does seem that a Fixing Factory is not just a case of moving restart parties to a permanent address, but focuses on training, raising awareness and other activities, with a small restart party attached once a week or so. For larger, hands on fixer-focused groups that might not work so well. Not that some sort of âFixing Factoryâ is a bad idea in my local area, but I donât see it replacing our group or the monthly event atm. (Edited to addâŚ) Having said that, if there were a Fixing Factory on every high street in the borough then the current monthly events could well be deserted. London has relatively few restart parties per head of population, currently, so itâs not surprising that the few that happen are very, very popular.
Iâve just noticed that the Hackney Fixing Factory has replaced the Hackney Fixers group and events. Iâd be interested in hearing about the experience of the group and the FF. Have the groupâs volunteers been fixing or helping out at the FF? Have FF visitors previously been to the groupâs events?
Hi all - thank you so much to everyone who has contributed thoughts/ideas; this is so helpful and will absolutely feed into the development of the scale-up model. Iâll update you all when weâve got more information to share, but to answer a few questions posed immediately: our Fixing Factories generally donât repair laptops/phones so as not to take business from local repair groups. Finding spaces has been a big challenge for us too, so interested to hear others have had the same issue - weâre currently trialling a range of different models including smaller high street spaces and larger workshop-style spaces to see what the impact is on footfall and impact. Youâre right that our Fixing Factories are currently more than permanent repair cafes - there are training elements, drop-off repairs, some corporate activities to generate income, refurbished item sales and other repair-related activities. Iâll leave @shelini to respond on the Hackney Fixers relationship!
