Repair Cafes – Mending The Deckchairs On The Titanic with John Hodge

A discussion in two parts. One is about Repair Cafes themselves, the other is a broader discussion around our relationship/dependency on manufactured consumer items.

Repair Cafes are regular community events where people bring in broken household items, and volunteers help fix them. This is a discussion about the nuts-and-bolts (quite literally) of how to start and run one, what usually takes place at them, as well as their history and guiding ethos. Anyone present who is also involved in Repair Cafes will be welcome to join in the discussion and share knowledge.

Fixing broken consumer items one at a time is not the ground-up systemic change required, if we are to avoid ending up in a WALL-E style dystopia. So, the discussion will broaden out to whether we can continue to live in a technological society without killing the planet, and if so, what are some of the ideas and practices which point the way forward.

John was for many years a writer/editor for SchNEWS, a Brighton-based alternative news collective, and in recent years worked on a digital Radical Media Archive. Also for decades off and on he has been involved in computer repair and/or electronics – and in recent years in a local Repair Cafe in Brighton.