What a day! On 9 May 2026, the United Reformed Church in Rookstone Road buzzed with energy, creativity, and a shared passion for making Tooting a better place. TootingCAN, organized by Transition Town Tooting (TTT) and funded by the Wandsworth Grant Fund, brought together 108 participants from all walks of life to celebrate the skills, resilience, and kindness that make our community thrive.
From the moment you walked in, you could feel that this was more than just an event. It was a testament to what happens when we come together to learn, share, and care for one another. Whether you were trying your hand at British Sign Language (BSL), crafting a comic book, or whipping up date balls in the kitchen, there was something for everyone, and everyone had something to give.
Stitching the Totes
A Celebration of Skills and Community
TTT’s mission is to tackle the climate and ecological emergency through volunteer-led, community-driven action right here in Tooting. TootingCAN is our moment to convene the people with skills and experiences from our locality to do exactly that through sharing, showcasing that our work is nothing without the vibrant and diverse community right here in Tooting. Participants left with new experiences, fresh ideas, and a sense of belonging that’s vital to build a flourishing sustainable future.:
108 participants engaged across 15 activities.
15+ workshops delivered, from worm composting to AI sustainability and Indian dance.
Around 75% of attendees were Wandsworth residents, proving that the best solutions start right where we live.
But the real magic was in the story we all started to weave:
9 out of 10 participants praised the event’s warmth and inclusivity, with many highlighting the friendliness and the diverse, healthy food as standout features.
Activities like the BSL workshop and Creation Station, led by children and supervised by Core Group member Abby, (where attendees crafted badges, mugs, and comic book stories) were particularly beloved, with participants calling them “inspiring” and “connected to family heritage.”
Special mention for Kelly’s cooking class for children; firstly as it enabled children to experience the joy of cooking nutritious meals from scratch, secondly as it introduced them to cooking sustainably through plant based recipes. It is hoped that this will plant the seeds for these children to enjoy cooking and cook meals that are good for the planet – potential huge long term gains if they can be sustained (through more Tooting CANs!)
The event closed with a community meal, performances of the fresh BSL skills and slick Indian dance moves before a collective sing song with the Lido Choir which brought the room to life, proving that joy is a skill we all share.
Lap around a Laptop, take a look inside…
Feedback That Warms the Heart and nourishes our work
This year, we had an engaging and creative way to gather feedback on the walls of the entrance corridors. One attendee, a 70-year-old singer, said:
“I loved the community atmosphere, anyone can sing! I’d love to see more singing in future events.”
Another, a 50-year-old stitching enthusiast, shared:
“I connected sewing to my family heritage and loved the Lido Choir. The whole event felt so welcoming.”
Contributors (our 30+ volunteers) echoed this sentiment. They loved seeing the diversity of skills on display and the buzz of activity, and the collective effort of hosting TootingCAN.
Indian dance, clack! clack!
What’s Next?
Transition Town Toting have run TootingCAN for the last 3 years and the enthusiasm for it grows each time. This year, we received loads of ideas for workshops at future TootingCANs, such as:
More singing and creative workshops (think choral singing, book clubs and dance)
Deeper dives into IT topics like AI and sustainability.
Arts and Crafts from crochet to lino printing, collage to painting & sketching
Food and cooking workshops like fermentation, kimchi and baking
Finally, the practical stuff: gardening, bike maintenance and woodwork.
Most importantly, TootingCAN proved that community resilience isn’t just a buzzword, it’s something we build, day by day, skill by skill, in community. Let’s see how next year’s tootingCAN develops!
Serving lunch
A Huge Thank You
To every participant, volunteer, and contributor, thank you for making TootingCAN a day to remember. Your energy, creativity, and kindness are what make Tooting special. Huge thanks to Amy and the United Reformed Church, our home from home. And to the Wandsworth Grant Fund, thank you for believing in this vision and helping us bring it to life.
The future is bright, and it starts right here in Tooting. Let’s keep sharing, learning, and growing together—because when we do, there’s no limit to what we can achieve.
Want to get involved? Perhaps you have something to offer for next year’s TootingCAN? Transition Town Tooting is always looking for volunteers and new ideas. Get in touch at [TransitionTownTooting@gmail.com] to join the movement!
Close with a sing song
Tooting can!
By Rich Couldrey
Step in to the creation station, stick, squeeze, badge Take a lap around a laptop, who knew AI was… Stitching ties, totes to carry your prize, whirrr, prick, chat, chat Chaat chaat, making chaat, spiced cascade, A taste of tooting in date … balls and pizzas made, squeeze, need and dough The meal begins to assemble ...
But wait, we dive underground, dark, as worms wriggle and squirm outside, Past quests for reflection, to planters repaired and hands in the soil, plants go in... grow, grow!
In community, we relate, a rainbow human family, What did you say? Hands sway and flow, in letters made as we move, my name, your name, hello hello.
Gestures turn to dance, sticks clack clack! As Ragini moves, with such grace and poise, we follow, Kathak, Kathak.
And back, to find a way into a digital world, clickety clack of fingers on keyboards learning to excel, nearly time to relax...
Wooosh! A gleeful child runs and newspaper kites fly out back, time to rise up... up... up... to see a drawn map of us all, BAT BAT.
Enough of all that, Take a breath, in and sing, feel the healing, "hold on, my dear, here comes the dawn" rings, And stop, pause, time to eat and reflect, A leek and potatoes soup to fill the...head… heart and hands, and celebrate... Tooting's rainbow soul, ‘til next time we gather and change the world once more.
Sewing and Sanctuary is a women’s sewing group which was founded in May 2022.
It is a Transition Town Tooting project run in partnership with Oxfam Tooting.
We are a place of sanctuary where women of refugee and asylum seeker backgrounds and women from the local community meet, stitch and chat. We enjoy learning together, sharing skills and helping one another. With an emphasis on reuse, we make beautiful creations whilst reducing textile waste.
Our priority is promoting good mental health. We use lots of different textile related techniques including hand stitching, machine stitching, crochet and knitting. Have a look at this lovely video of our work.
After over ten years of flourishing as a vibrant oasis in the heart of Tooting, the Tooting Community Garden will go into a period of transformation. For local residents the garden has long offered a place where wilderness and community spirit met. Now, as a new development takes shape, the garden faces its next chapter.
Development and Change
The largest portion of the cherished green space will soon make way for a new, though long-planned, project: eight assisted living flats.
While the reduction in size marks a significant change for the garden – the loss of wild space and refuge for all the animals loving rotting wood and leafy corners (look at our Instagram for the biodiversity we have!)
Nevertheless, we see it as a new beginning. Planning approval was granted on the condition that the community garden would remain, ensuring its legacy continues in a reimagined guise. We are grateful for the ongoing commitment from Naseem Aboobaker to our gardening cause.
Looking Forward
Though the footprint of the garden may shrink, its ambitions for it remain unchanged. We are determined to maintain a dedicated space for growing, learning, and fostering sustainable practices and we are working with the architect to maintain as much of what has become ‘our’ space as possible.
Over the coming six months, our focus will shift to a horticultural rescue mission: identifying which of our perennials to keep and for which we might be seeking new homes—or perhaps even foster plots—for our surplus plants. With a touch of hope, we imagine a handful of these plants as the first seeds of what will become the Fishponds community garden.
This oasis began its journey many years ago in summer 2012, emerging from the brambles behind 5, North Drive. Starting out with preparing beds to grow vegetables of the years we added trees and shrubs and fruit bushes. So many of those donated to find a new home as people had to leave their gardens or had to much success with their planting.
When developers took away the small woodland that bordered our sanctuary, we seized the opportunity—introducing a patch of flax and carving out a potato plot, breathing new life into every inch of the reclaimed ground.
Not to forget, the herb bed created and tended to by our friend Rose until the very last weeks of her life. The new community garden will hold a space that will be Rose’s bed.
The much anticipated, Community Stitching Upcycled Fashion Show took place on Saturday 20th September at Tooting United Reformed Church.
The fashion show started at 12.30 pm and about twenty upcycled outfits were showcased by our amazing models, most of whom were regular members of the Sewing and Sanctuary group, complemented by friends and family.
Our fantastic compère, Jane Clark, who is also a facilitator of the group, talked the audience through the garments being worn, to inspire others to try this at home! Several of our makers had incorporated Shibori stitch resist-dyed indigo pieces and sashiko samples made at Sewing and Sanctuary under the guidance of Jill Rutter, who also appeared as one of our models, showing more of her own work. Many of the garments in the show had been rescued from Oxfam’s recycling bags, or discovered at the Work and Play Scrapstore, beautifully illustrating how we can breathe new life into previously unwanted clothes. Our showstopper skirt incorporated vintage tablecloths and vintage crochet doilies and it was embroidered with meaningful words selected by group members to express how coming to the group makes them feel, some of these were ‘connect’ ‘inspire’ ‘welcome’.
Following the show, attendees could chat and go to each of the 6 activity tables to try out some of these upcycling skills. On offer was making felt or fabric flower brooches with Gloria from Sewing and Sanctuary and Gillian from Crafty Pint. Heather, representing the Tooting Market crochet group, led pom-pom making plus an introduction to crochet and knitting. Doreen and Shirley from Thread and Connect taught weaving skills with cardboard looms, Balham Sewing Bee members showed how to add pockets to garments and Nabila offered mending skills. Participants were truly inspired by the attractive displays of various natural dyeing techniques by Jill Rutter, Jane Clark and Helen Kertesz. The stall selling haberdashery from the Work and Play Scrapstore was very popular too!
There was a wonderful buzz of activity in the room and all this time the fantastic TTT catering team, led by Abby, were busily making organic vegetable and lentil, vegan soup (ingredients kindly donated by Abel and Cole). The room was skilfully transformed, creating one long, dressed dining table, thanks to the skilful guidance of Rich, and everyone sat down to a delicious lunch of soup served with fresh bread and tasty samosas (kindly supplied by Pooja).
This event celebrated Wandsworth Borough Council’s Sustainable September and Oxfam’s Secondhand September.
Having been inspired by Fishponds Bioblitz we decided to do our own and to start with looking out for our garden animals.
A BioBlitz is defined as a short, intensive period of time during which a group of people find and identify as many species of plants, animals, fungi and other organisms as possible within a specific georgraphic are.
We decided to focus on animals this time and spend a gardening session to expore our own area. Maybe a little less scientific but nevertheless fun. We also wanted to see how much diversity we have in our garden and to continue doing these exercises year on year to monitor the development of animal diversity.
Equipped with containers, brushes and sticks we ventured around the garden, we looked closely at our flowers to look for pollinators, we turned over stones for invertebraes and lifted the rugs from our compost bins to capture some of our many arachnids.
The writer of this post was most surprised by the diversity of snails and slugs in the garden. Not their best friends when it comes to cultivating kale they thought there is ‘THE slug’ and ‘THE snail’. A leopard slug is surprisingly pretty.
We found Parakeets eating the greengages (see the video on our Instagram of that), different sizes of crab spiders a jumping spider a red tailed and a white backed bumblebee.
We learned the difference between a millepedes and centipedes. Did you know that centipedes are carnivorous and actually have fangs to immobilise their prey.
We collected a variety of types of woodlice of all sizes.
Some of our hollyhocks have already started to go to seed – and it is fascinating to watch the tiny weevils with their trunk munching on the seeds.
The kids surprised with their knowledge of bugs and most of all how they handled the bugs and spiders.
Come along to this event and be inspired by the upcycled work of Sewing and Sanctuary and other local sewing groups and stitchers. On arrival browse a ‘not for sale’ rail of upcycled garments to spark conversation over refreshments. Following our fashion show you can learn and share new stitching skills and upcycling techniques, helping you to ditch fast fashion and love the clothes you have. We will have around 6 activity tables, each led by a local sewing group or textile artist. (see below). Meet fellow makers over freshly prepared food. Everyone can join in at the end of the show so don’t forget to wear your best work!
Jill Rutter will have a display of her indigo dyed Shibori and sashiko work.
Helena Kertesz, member of the TTT Community Garden team and Jane Clark, will each have displays of their work with natural dyes.
Read more about event organisers, Sewing & Sanctuarya Transition Town Tooting project based at Oxfam Tooting where we meet every week. All of our beautiful creations are made from rescued, reused and donated secondhand materials.
Part of Sustainable September and supported by Wandsworth Together Climate Change and Oxfam’s Secondhand September.
In the past fortnight members of Sewing And Sanctuary, the local TTT and Oxfam collaboration, have made these very beautiful textile leaves at Friday sessions and also at home. So many techniques!
The group has connected with Sewing Cafe Lancaster who called out for hand-made leaves, so it’s a warm-hearted collective and connected link from Tooting to Lancashire that’s creative and practical.
Leaves made with love by many people are being combined in a sculpture between 24 & 26 April. The piece will be called ‘Leaves of Dhaka’ and it commemorates one of the largest-ever workplace disasters, when the Rana Plaza garment-making factory in Bangladesh collapsed on 24 April 2013, killing an estimated 1,134 workers. Almost all the casualties were women and they were making garments for Western high street chains. The international charity Fashion Revolution was established following the disaster to highlight fair working practices for ‘Who Makes Your Clothes?’ – one of their taglines.
Here’s the link https://sewingcafelancaster.com/event/frw25/ to the programme when these leaves will be incorporated alongside many others. You can see some images below of them in the gallery.
All invited to drop in to the event if you are in Lancaster and you can follow Sewing And Sanctuary on Instagram at @sewingandsanctuary
Many years ago a previous community garden group grew wheat and managed to bake one loaf of bread from it. So why not try it again?
Inspired by one of our members who was asking for a source of getting wheat for her garden we also got ourselves some seeds. We tend to grow low maintenance crop in the garden as we don’t have the resource to tend to delicate plants. We also found in recent years weather volatility is driving us towards the hardier end of plants that tolerate draught and rain. So the wheat seemed a good idea.
We got in touch with the Brockwell Bake Association https://www.brockwell-bake.org.uk/ who offer ‘April Bearded’, a grain last commonly cultivated during the 19th century. Their seed stock of this was grown and harvested by Kent farmer Andrew Lingham at Court Farm, Halling. Heritage wheats are generally more suitable for non-farm and organic farm sowing as they do not require the chemical fertilizer, herbicides, pesticides, fungicides and growth regulator typically used in conventional wheat farming for success with modern wheat lines.
We prepared an area that we had to clear to give our apple tree a bit more space and sowed our 2m2 of wheat in rows. Watered it twice to allow germination and now wait and see.
Below are photos from the first 3 weeks of the wheat project. We will provide regular updates on our Community Garden Instagram.
But do come by on a Saturday 11.00 till 13.00 (and often until much later – because once you are in the garden it’s hard to leave) and join us in sowing and planting for the next season.
Whether it is cooking, growing, sewing, pickling, soldering or making : the community of Tooting has an abundance of skills and talents. On 15th March 2025 we came together for our third Tooting CAN! to share skills, meet our neighbours have some fun!
Dive into our blog below telling the story of the day (with ‘how to’ links and delicious recipes!)
Pickling and Fermenting
Ben showed us how to make kimchi, kombucha and beer pickles – we had a taste and took away some recipes to have a go for ourselves.
Gardening
Volunteers from our Community Garden joined us to be talk worms, compost and what keeps our soil healthy for growing. These images show the worm home hard at work in the garden!
We planted seeds to take it home.
Find out more about the garden and get involved here.
Mask Making
Great fun for children (and adults!) – Dora lead a team teaking us how to make fabulous cat masks using paints and textiles!
Soldering
Dermot of Repair Club led short taster sessions teaching people how to build and test a simple electronic kit, and pick up some basic soldering skills that can be used for a range of repair jobs.
We were joined by the team at Sewing and Sanctuary to make bags from upcycled materials. Some of us made a plastic free, fabric shopping bag https://morsbags.com/) with Gloria on the sewing machines, others made hand stitched drawstring bags to be used as gift bags, lavender bags or storage.
Future food Tooting!
We were joined by Fast Familiar to celebrate our favourite Tooting food hotspots and build what we think is missing… with Lego!
Origami
Maggie from Tooting Scrapstore taught us the ancient art of paper folding – including boxes, butterflies, cups, and flowers!
Want to reduce your food miles and gain a new pet? Chicken keeping may be the answer. Laila shared tips and answered questions on how to keep chickens in your Tooting back garden. Top question – how do you keep them safe from foxes?
Fantastic local photographer, Phylisha Wisdom, shared I-phone photography tips and hints (and took lots of lovely pictures of the event which we’re sharing here – thanks Phylisha!)
Abby helped us explore an accessible mindfulness activity using your senses to help you stay in the moment – easy to use in almost any environment. Find out more about the exercise here
Cooking
Our team of cooks taught us how to make make alu tikki, rustle up a hearty vegetable soup and whip up a super easy two ingredient vegan chocolate mousse – then join us all in tasting the results!
Finally we gathered together at a long table, shared the delicious food we had cooked. We celebrated all the wonderful things we had learnt and made together and our mask makers led us in a march of masks accompanied by Ranjit on the dhol!
We will run Tooting CAN again in 2026!
What skills do you have you could share?
Contact us to find out more at transitiontowntooting@gmail.com
Read all about Tooting Repair Club launch, Repair Week 2025 and Leaping out of Windows without fear from local fixer Dermot – and email us at repairclub.org@gmail.com or visit the Tooting Repair Club web page to hear about future sessions.
The first rule of Repair Club is: “You do not talk about Repair Club”
So like an ancient mariner of fixing…here I am – a week later and still buzzing from an energised evening in Tooting launching tooting Repair Club, as an official partner of Repair Week. And very happy to talk about it.
First of all: it was an absolute blast to spend an evening with people either already in the repair world, or peeking into it curiously.
Oh, but I’m jumping ahead. Many of you will have heard of repair cafes – there’s over 2,500 of these community ‘bring and fix’ groups worldwide – but Repair Clubs? Probably not. Until last week there were just three of them, all in North London. And now the new kid, Tooting Repair Club, makes it a total of four!
What’s a Repair Club? It’s not really defined: and it’s kinda up to each club to decide for itself. Broadly speaking it’s a place for habitual fixers to meet, share and develop skills, drink tea, eat the occasional pizza, and of course fix stuff. All in a social setting. There’s probably training too. They’re a not-too-far-distant relative of Mens Sheds, Stitch and Bitch or the Hacker/Makerspace movements.
As Tooting Repair Club is brand new I’m not going to presume to define it – its personality will emerge over time, formed from the people who join and drive it. So I’m going to return to the night in question: Wednesday 5th March 2025, after a beautiful – almost t-shirt weather – late Winter’s day.
In the midst of a cluster of curious people – ranging from students to the long-retired – I’m dispensing some easy repair tips as if they’re magic tricks. I’m aware of more people coming through the front door and small groups of people gathered in animated conversations spread across the room. We’re slightly swept off our feet: pleasantly surprised by the popularity of event. Guests have arrived even before opening time, and we’ve not finished setting up the activities…but the core team is riding the wave and going with the flow. I have a sense of the energy in the room, but can only catch a fraction of the conversations. This of course makes me an unreliable teller of this tale…however I’ll try to give a snapshot of what I’m seeing.
TThere’s so much curiosity in the room. Curiosity seems endemic to fixers: and along with dogged determination is one of the core characteristics needed to repair things nowadays. We live in the information age, yet there’s never been less sharing of information by manufacturers of the workings of our everyday gadgets; a key resource that would open up millions of repairs.
A young journalism student – Will Harris from City News – is coming down to record a radio piece. He’s touring a few Repair Week events for this assignment. I notice someone arriving from the corner of my eye; something about his presence tells me this is Will – but for once at a repair event he’s not the only young person in the room. I peel off from the group and head over to greet him.
But I should have introduced you to where we are: as I said, my script is out the window, so forgive this, but it’s not too late. We’re gathered in Mushkil Aasaan’s community hub in Upper Tooting Road: guests of this renowned local charity started by a group of muslim women, that supports families, and also generously opens their centre to a broad spectrum of community activities. Mushkil Aasaan could be described as the spiritual home of community repair in Tooting. It’s where we held our first Tooting Restart Parties back in 2014 – a decade ago – and this lends extra resonance to tonight’s session
A decade on and the change in attitudes to repair – and depth of knowledge of our guests – is palpable. Back in 2014 you would have to constantly explain what a repair cafe is, and I’m not sure any of us fixers had yet heard the expression “Right to Repair”. We also struggled to get people through the door. Now our visitors flood in, preloaded: they know the landscape, they’re acutely aware that our stuff all seem to break long before its time – built-in obsolescence is ingrained in their consciousness.
Where was I? Oh yes, chatting to Will the journalist. He seems quick witted and professional, and forgives my bad jokes. After a couple of questions I’m pleased he’s done his homework on the subject – these are better questions than some of the BBC interviews I’ve done…but we’re not going there right now.
I’m in First Rule of Repair Club mode, and Will is making it easy to eulogise Repair Week and community repair, and express some of my views about the state of manufacturing of our stuff…
Chatting with Will has given me a chance to pause and reflect on what I’ve heard tonight and who’s in the room: from intern, to home maker, to retired sound recordist. Maybe repair skills are not just a niche for tinkerers and those prepping for the zombie apocalypse, perhaps they’re essential life skills? Wouldn’t every home benefit from having someone who can wire a plug, data-wipe a gadget, or persuade a toaster to hold down toast?
Back in the room tea is being brought round and a huge mound of locally made samosas is being wafted under our noses – it’s after sunset during Ramadan, and I momentarily wonder if they taste even better when you’ve fasted all day? But in front of me a group has gathered around the solder station, and it’s my pleasure to guide them through a taster session of the essential repair skill of electronics soldering. I’m impressed how quickly they’re able to pick it up, and we’re getting some high quality solder joints…but our full soldering workshop is over four hours, so I try to temper expectations and guide them to further studies, and practice! I note that there’s a high proportion of younger women in the room: smashing norms in both the tech and community repair worlds.
I told you about the first rule of Repair Club, and tonight we have a one-off second one: no fixing(!). A very tough one for fixers to agree on. We see a broken thing and are viscerally drawn to fix it. But Garry – who’s now doing the ‘magic tricks’ – was clear: if we end up fixing things all the taster sessions and engagement opportunities will get shelved. Broken items would be Kyrptonite. Garry had a solution: “We just won’t have the tools on site – then we can’t fix”. A hard choice but this is a taster and engagement session, and we need to be aware of our capacity.
Did I say Kryptonite? I meant catnip…
It’s a good plan, and we have a list of future repair cafes and pro repair businesses on hand to direct people to…
But, like many good plans, this simply crumbles in the face of a broken and needy item in the arms of a bringer (‘bringer’ is the popular term for people who come to repair cafes).
And who ends up doing the bulk of repairs that evening? Yep, Garry: he finds a Leatherman multitool (a kind of industrial grade Swiss army knife) had stowed-away in his pocket, enabling him to carry out a range of repairs…so it seems there is no such thing as a ‘get out of fixing card’.
I’m not sure what’s getting fixed. I glimpse a table lamp, and some small hinged boxes? But I need to stay focused on the task at hand, I need to keep myself well upwind of that catnip..
As I said, we’re largely on an engagement and fact finding mission this evening (now with Garry temporarily down, caught up in fixing), and delighted to see roughly twenty new faces along with some of our old friends. Hilary is facilitating the give and gain walls with a plan for some breakout discussions later (we never get to them) – sharpies and post-its abound. She’s also testing the water with Tooting Repair Rooms – our mid-term goal to create a permanent repair hub in Tooting. The idea goes down well: long-time fixing friend Shaz describes it as “the natural evolution for repair in Tooting”, and this seems to get nods all round.
You can tell that many different roads have led people to Repair Club tonight: some just need a thing fixed, some are looking to be part of the repair revolution, others have deep skills they want to share – there’s a strong climate and environmental vibe – and all think something has to change. These are future origin stories: important strands in the tale that’s told when we look back on this throwaway age from the vantage point of a fully fixable world. If we decide that’s our future it needn’t be far distant either. I might even live to see it.
There’s an underlying pang for an all but lost world of quality: clothes that have a future as vintage, appliances that last decades rather than barely making it past the retirement age of their one year warranty. Quality products are in living memory, and of course still around us: Kenwood Chefs (the Galápagos tortoises of kitchen islands), vintage Hoovers still in use by elderly relatives, and being built today: the Dualit Classic toaster. A stainless steel tank of an appliance – perhaps designed to survive a nuclear Armageddon and supply toast for that zombie apocalypse – assuming the survivor generation is one that’s got some basic repair skills.
Oh, did I drop some teaser about leaping out of windows in the title – is that what’s kept you reading? The wait is over…
Leaping out of Windows (10) – less scary than you think
On October 14th this year the axe could be falling on 240m non-upgradeable Windows computers when Microsoft ends support for Windows 10.
Absorb that for a moment…240 million laptops, desktops and tablets potentially on the scrap heap.
A terrific sales opportunity – salesperson of the month trophy makers will be working overtime.
A disaster for the planet. All leave will be cancelled at the electronics crushing and grinding plant for the foreseeable future.
(note to self: startup idea #113. Salesperson of the month trophies made from repurposed Windows 10 laptop parts! #circularity)
But there’s a way out – and Mike’s at a table towards the back, near where the samosa mound has come to rest, live-demonstrating just how painless it is.
The solution – putting Linux Mint on your device – is simple and has many benefits: it’s free, it’ll speed up your computer, and for many of us it’ll deliver everything we need – some users might need to stay on Windows (not all external hardware is supported on Linux) – but software wise there’s not much you can’t achieve on Linux nowadays. We’re looking into running some sessions just for this. It feels like an urgent problem, but one with a solution…yet a solution that’s either not known about or misunderstood as highly technical.
The crowd has thinned a little – a bunch of us are reading the give and gain walls out loud. We reflect that there’s a very high match of skills needed to those offered, just amongst the thirty or so people in the room! From PAT testing to 3d printing via zip replacement and making tea.
And then, seemingly in the snap of fingers, three hours have passed and it’s time to close the Repair Club…phew!
It’s after 9pm, and we need to load the van and shift the tables. We’re tired but wired: Julie is firing on all cylinders, making mental connections, linking ideas, turning challenges into possibilities. And the most common question we all heard: “when’s the next one?”. It feels like we’ve really started something here – some brains won’t be switching off for hours, mine included.
We had a buzzing evening, with dozens of interesting, interested people. Ideas flying around the room. We sensed that we’re at a tipping point in community repair, and that there’s an appetite from an enlightened section of the public to get stuck into the next phase. We’ve taken away a bunch of suggestions and ideas, and now need to organise and find venues. We’ll be back very soon with some more Tooting Repair Club dates!
After this first session an image is starting to form around what Tooting Repair Club might be. Come join us and add your DNA to the mix, or perhaps get together in your area and form the fifth ever Repair Club (you might have to be quick though).
From the evidence above you’re probably convinced that I am the ancient mariner of maintenance and repair – a steam iron hanging by its frayed and gnarly cord round my neck, words flowing like an electrical short circuit. Yet on some level I just want to shut up and help fix things. To stop me talking just waft a misbehaving item in my peripheral vision. But someone’s got to say this stuff and in spite of the fun and social aspects of Repair Club, we’re operating in a safety-critical environment, and rules is rules, and I’ve agreed to abide by them. So until the first rule changes you’ll be hearing plenty more from me…
One final thing: if you’ve gotten this far and found something that chimed with you, then I encourage you to honour the first rule, and tell at least one other person about something about Repair Club.
