On the 8th and 9th of November, we celebrate the wrap up of the TALES OF CARE & REPAIR project. Sharing with you our learnings, views, stories, declarations and journey over the last 10 months (Feb-Nov 2021). Reaching out to our collaborators, colleagues, project partners and inspiring repair practitioners, scholars, designers, makers and menders from across the global, we invite you to join the conversation, which will run online during the second week of COP 26, that is the 26th United Nations Climate Change conference, which will be held in the city of Glasgow, Scotland, between 31 October and 12 November 2021.
Registration:
Event is free but registration necessary via Eventbrite.
Agenda: Monday, 8th Nov 2021
13.00-13.30: Welcome & Orientation
13.30-14.30 Repair Conversation 1: Cartographies of Repair: Josh Lepawsky, Memorial University of Newfoundland & Teresa Dillon, University of the West of England: Moderator, Alma Clavin, University Collage, Dublin
14.30-14.45: Break & Online showreel: TALES OF CARE & REPAIR
14.45-15.45: Repair Conversation 2: The Right to Repair & Climate Change: Chloé Mikolajczak, Right to Repair European Campaign & Susan Evans, The Green Alliance: Moderator, Associate Director, Satish Sinha, Toxics Link
15.45-16.00: Break & Mingle
16.00-17.00: Repair Conversation 3: Reflections on Tales of Care & Repair from the Ground-Up: Dawn Giles, Sahil Gochhayat & Romana Abreu: Moderator Fred Paulino
17.00-17.15: Break & Online Exhibition: Marta Celio & BA Graphic Design Students, University of the West
17.15-18.15: Repair Conversation 4: The Promise of the Circular, Repair, Waste & New “Green” Economies: Julia Corwin, London School of Economics and Political Science & Felipe Schmidt Fonseca, Northumbria University / Mozilla Foundation: Moderator, Teresa Dillon
18.15-18.30: Closing Thanks
Exhibition: A Thing of Beauty, London. This year, the City of London Corporation’s Outdoor Arts Programme presents A Thing of Beauty, commemorates the bicentenary of the death of the poet John Keats and celebrating beauty, which was a recurring motif in his work. The season will focus on beauty, love and truth, exploring these concepts through the lens of art, nature and relationships and addressing themes of diversity, the environment and sustainability. As part of this exhibition, TALES OF CARE AND REPAIR has been selected by the British Council, Creative Commission team to be one of the selected projects that will be showcased as part of a street exhibition. Running from the 1 November to early December the exhibition will take place across three central London locations: Paternoster Square, Aldgate Square and Guildhall Yard.
Speaker and Moderators Biographies
Alma Clavin is an urban geographer and social sciences researcher in the School of Geography, University College Dublin. Over the last two decades Alma has worked for a number of public, private and non-governmental organisations in Ireland and the UK on community planning, energy and sustainability issues with a focus on grassroots practices and the relationship between green areas, health and wellbeing in densely populated urban areas. While this work is primarily rooted through the discipline of Geography, it’s interdisciplinary in practice, drawing on the fields of art, architecture, planning and design. From 2019-2021 Alma coordinated the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) – a funded collaborative action research project, creating a community-led greening strategy in Dublin city and is currently undertaking a project funded by the National Economic and Social Council (NESC) to examine place based approaches for Just Transitions. This work focuses on how we can create decent work and quality of life as we move to a low carbon economy. In collaboration with Teresa Dillon, Alma is the receipt of a Creative Ireland, Climate Action grant (Sept 2021-Dec 2022), which focuses on past, present and futures repair histories, narratives and imaginaries in Ireland.
Chloé Mikolajczak is a campaigner for the Right to Repair European campaign and a climate justice activist working to make European policies greener and fairer. She coordinates a network of more than 80 members in 18 European countries including civil society organisations, repair businesses, community repair initiatives and public institutions fighting for longer lasting and more repairable products. She also hosts The Burning Case podcast aimed at making the link between EU policies and the most pressing issues of our time more understandable and accessible.
Dawn Giles supports the production of TALES OF CARE AND REPAIR on the UK side. Originally studying Fine Art and Painting and photography, Dawn has over twenty years experience as an art curator, producer and manager. Relocating to Bristol in 2016, Dawn has returned to her arts roots, working as maker and mender using techniques from drawing, print and textiles. Embracing the delights of pattern making, repetition, and decoration her work explores and make connections between art, craft and ideas of labour and leisure.
Felipe Schmidt Fonseca is a Brazilian activist and free/open advocate turned researcher, working on the OpenDoTT project and living currently in Berlin, Germany. His current research topic is waste prevention through collective practices of reuse in cities and regions. In the last fifteen years Felipe was a co-founder and leader of a number of community and networking initiatives dedicated to critical thinking (and making) in the crossroads between culture, science, technology and society. Some examples are Tropixel, MetaReciclagem, CulturaDigital.BR, Bricolabs, Rede//Labs, Lixo Eletrônico, Ciência Aberta Ubatuba, UbaLab. Felipe is a PhD candidate in the School of Design at Northumbria University.
Fred Paulino is a Brazilian artist, designer, researcher and curator. He holds a bachelor in Computer Science from UFMG (Federal University of Minas Gerais) and postgraduate studies in Contemporary Art at UEMG (State University of Minas Gerais / Guignard School). He is the catalyst of the referential Gambiologia project, which since 2008 investigates art and technology in dialogue with education and popular culture, especially around the themes of improvisation and reuse. His works have been shown in many countries such as USA, Austria, Colombia, Cuba, Spain, South Africa and Japan. He is the editor-in-chief of Facta Magazine and curated three editions of “Gambiologos” exhibitions. He has been the coordinator of independent education programs such as Favela Hacklab.
Josh Lepawsky researches the geographies of discards as well as those of maintenance and repair. Questions that inform his research include where and how are contemporary discards made? Where do they travel and where do their effects accumulate? Who gets what discards, where, how, and under what conditions? He is also interested in how maintenance and repair, broadly conceived, might offer both literal and figurative lessons for figuring out how to live well together in permanently polluted and always breaking worlds.
Dr Julia Corwin is Assistant Professor in Environment in the Department of Geography and Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is an urban ethnographer who studies economies and local cultures of waste and repair. Her research has focused on global flows of electronic ‘waste’ and their revaluation through economies of repair and re-manufacturing in India, conducted through a patchwork ethnography of local markets and their role in global electronics trade networks. She is beginning a new research project on electronics repair in London. Julia holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Minnesota. Prior to her entry into academia, she worked on urban environmental issues in New York City for the Department of Sanitation and the Department of Parks and Recreation.
Ravi Agarwal is the founder-director of the environmental NGO Toxics Link, which has pioneered work on waste and chemicals over the past three decades. Toxics Link has played a key role in issues relating to environmental health at various levels, including helping formulate policies and regulations for bio medical waste, municipal solid waste, electronic and electrical waste, hazardous waste, chemicals in products, POPS, and also to establish several best practice models on the ground. Alongside Agarwal is also an artist, writer, and curator. His work has been exhibited at Havanna Biennial (2019), Kochi Biennial (2016), Sharjah Biennial (2013) and Documenta XI (2002) etc. He has authored and edited articles, books and journals including the recently published ‘The Crisis of Climate Change, Weather Report’ (2021, Routledge) edited with Omita Goyal and the chapter ‘Alien Waters’ (2021) in The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, and Climate Change (edited by T.J Demos, Emily Eliza Scot and Subhankar Banerjee). Ravi was awarded the WHO-IFCS Award for Chemical Safety (2008) and the Ashoka Fellowship (1997). He lives in New Delhi and is an engineer and MBA by training.
Romana Abreu is a cultural producer, one of the co-heads of MASTERp la n o collective and co-founder and curator of the podcast A-MIG, a nomadic platform that broadcasts mixtapes and sound experiments of emerging artists from Brazil and around the world. She also heads projects that seek to share the knowledge and challenges related to the independent cultural production in Belo Horizonte.
Satish Sinha is the Associate Director of Toxics Links, a leading environmental group working on issues of waste and chemicals and a veteran from India Air Force. For over two decades he has been an active campaigner and advocates for sustainable development. Under Satish’s leadership, Toxics Link has made a significant contribution towards shaping the current Municipal and e-Waste rules for India, with his work impacting extensively on changing the landscape of mercury management in India and the region. Satish holds a visiting faculty position at and is a prominent member on discourses relating to circular economy and the Right to Repair in India.
Sahil Gochhayat is the Programme Officer for Toxics Links and is passionate about the field of urban ecology. Concerned about the rate of human development and its impact on the environment, Sahil views collective effort, education and awareness as crucial in changing mindsets and behaviours, so that all species can enjoy a better future. A keen nature photographer and editor outside of his work at Toxics Links, Sahil enjoys tending to plants and nature treks. Sahil holds a MA in Ecology, Environment and Sustainable Development from The Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in Guwahati and a BA in English Literature from Delhi University.
Susan Evans joined Green Alliance in September 2021 as a senior policy adviser, leading the organisation’s work on resource efficiency and the circular economy. Her current projects look at how to make better use of the tax system to support a just transition, and how to ensure sustainable supplies of the critical raw materials needed for low-carbon technologies. Susan was previously policy manager at Zero Waste Scotland, where she led a team providing circular economy policy support to the Scottish Government. She worked on policies and regulations including restrictions on single-use plastics, reforms to extended producer responsibility and the early development of a Circular Economy Bill for Scotland. Prior to that, Susan worked for over eight years with the Economist Intelligence Unit, first as an in-house analyst in Hong Kong and later as an external contractor, after starting her own research business in Edinburgh. Building on her background as a China analyst, she conducted a number of research projects related to global trade and development, including responsible supply chains, before turning her attention to the circular economy and domestic environmental policy. Susan has a degree in Chinese from the University of Edinburgh and a masters in international relations from the University of Nottingham. She is also a trained adviser at her local Citizens Advice Bureau.
Teresa Dillon is an artist and researcher. Her performative and site-based practice explores techno-civic entanglements and their associated spatial relations in urban contexts with a focus on cultures of survival, care, repair, maintenance and healing. In 2018 she co-founded Repair Acts – a practice-based research programme that explores repair cultures in a pluralistic and collective manner and since 2013, directs Urban Hosts – a programme the explores alternative urban futures. Teresa’s work has been published in various contexts and she has participated in numerous exhibitions, art residencies, conferences and seminar programmes, with recent performance and academic writing exploring the relation between ritual, artistic practice and posthuman legalities. A Humboldt Fellow, Teresa is a member of the Berlin-based spatial collective, Soft Agency and she currently holds the post of Professor of City Futures at the School of Art and Design, UWE Bristol.