Restart and Sew-vember
An afternoon of fixing and mending!
On Saturday 12th November Transition Town Tooting and Restart held an event to get people reusing their broken things. Local connecting hub Mushkil Aasaan hall was a hive of activity with many people so keen they turned up early!
The Restart project is a London-based social enterprise that encourages and empowers people to use their electronics longer in order to reduce waste.
And so for 3 hours on a very wet afternoon tooting residents brought their broken electronics to be fixed. Around 30 items were brought in to the event and the Restarters worked hard to get things up and running again or identify the problem and give advice on how the residents themselves could solve the problem if it needed parts.A very lively corner of the room was the Sewvember tables. Set up by local maker Jeni, as part of the TTT Meet & Make workshop series, the aim was to assist people who had clothing, curtains and soft toys that need mending to repair them. Right from the outset there were people wanting assistance and taking advantage of the sewing machine.
The day started out with one sewing machine but at one point two more had been brought in and there was a whole crowd mending things.
The rain didn’t deter anyone from turning up, it was busy all day right until closing, good thing there were plenty of refreshments to keep people going at the TTT cafe.
With both restart and Sewvember the great things is that the people bringing the items are an integral part of solving the issues so they learned new skills and hopefully they will be able to be applied to other items they own that could be reused.
Can’t wait till the next one. Look out for more Restart parties here https://therestartproject. org/parties/ and more crafty events here https://www.facebook.com/meetmakeswl/