The “Repair Workshop” has a whole new meaning. This morning, I discovered on the Maker Faire website a really interesting etsy blog post (from last month) about the fix-it revolution. It touches on a couple of inspiring examples in Amsterdam (Repair Cafe) and NYC (Fixers Collective), where small groups get together for a kind of re-use and repair community activity. They bring their broken objects and work on them together to “fix-it” instead of “toss it.” Love it!
The article – and Maker Faire itself – got me thinking about the DIY/indie crafts movement, which I followed closely for years (I even wrote my Master’s thesis on BUST magazine) and kind of got away from recently, when parenting meant a swing away from some of that crafty community time. I still try to save everything to make something new whenever possible. You should see my collection of soy milk pour spout stoppers – gonna make a great necklace one of these days – or a lawn installation at the rate I’m going.
But the DIY movement is still going strong, and there seem to be different factions developing that work well together for the same purpose – handmade and re/upcycled goods. The communities seemed to really blossom online in forums like Craftster and Get Crafty, as well as publications like BUST and Craft and Make magazines. And now it looks to be unifying with the “go/buy/shop local” movement, since creative community has always come down to the small group situation (quilting bee, sewing circle and terrorist society, etc.).
I see this kind of thing in Durham (NC) all the time, where the community is really active in supporting local businesses, buying quality merchandise and repurposing existing stuff as much as possible. And it seems to be growing everywhere (to the point that corporations and credit cards are now using “shop local” campaigns of their own!). When big business adopts a community effort as a marketing campaign, you know it’s working.
In the post, Chappell Ellison writes about the manufacturer trend of “planned obsolence,” where an object is built to only last a few years so that consumers have to consistently replace it. I’m hoping that the DIY, crafts, and re-use/repair trends will be bred into our culture soon, and that more and more people will be inspired to make and fix and upcycle instead of buying cheap stuff and throwing it away. There certainly is enough inspiration out there to get started!
Domestic Edge 