Sketching out a repair on butcher's paper

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Repair design

Jesse Adams Stein, Alexandra Crosby, Thomas Lee, Katherine Scardifield, Rachael Wakefield-Rann

The UTS Design Studies team partnered with The Bower: Reuse & Repair Centre and the eWaste Watch Institute to produce a program of events for informed, realistic and meaningful public discussion about repair practices, capacities and limitations in an Australian context. There was a playful workshop as part of Sydney Craft Week, a panel discussion broadcast on ABC Radio National’s Big Ideas, futuring sessions, and a collective object analysis. The project reframed repair as a design practice, and in doing so openly acknowledged design’s culpability in environmental degradation and waste.

Understanding the relationship between repair and design is necessary for the development of stronger policy, for more responsible design practice and for the open sharing of material knowledge and digital information. This research shaped a Public Submission to the Productivity Commission’s Right to Repair Inquiry and generated a range of other outcomes (listed below.)