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.
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.
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.
We have now reached our second anniversary and the sewing group is going from strength to strength with around 20 regular members. Last year we featured in two short Oxfam films marking Refugee Week and Secondhand September. Also marking the latter, we ran a sashiko denim patch workshop for 30 Oxfam shop managers and staff, in Mushkil Aasaan and secondly, we ran a repair and upcycling workshop, on the Oxfam shop floor.
During the year we had two takeovers of the shop window, when we exhibited our handiwork to the shoppers of Tooting. The second of these was the culmination of a project ‘Different Ways to feel London is your Home’. This fantastic project was suggested and managed by our wonderful facilitator Patricia who brought her flair, skills and colourful creativity all the way from Columbia. Acknowledging that many of us were originally from different countries or other parts of the UK, we celebrated this by making items for the home collaboratively, using recycled materials and including colours, symbols, fabrics or techniques from our various homes and cultures.
The finished furnishings included a hammock made using crocheted strips of waste tee-shirts, a plaited rug made from sari falls recalling rangoli designs, a bed set using techniques from Afghanistan and labelled ‘dreaming of a better life in London’ and a fabric tea service recalling conversations over tea in Paris. As we made these items, various members of the group stood up and shared their memories of childhood, home and families and this was very moving.
We completed our beautiful ‘Sewing and Sanctuary’ banner with each letter created by a different member of the group using a variety of techniques and all from repurposed materials of course! You may have seen it on display at Tooting Can or one of our other events.
We took it along to a meeting organised by Wandsworth Welcomes Refugees involving a number of local community sewing groups where we met a team from Liberty. This led to two visits (including some of our group members) to the Design Studio at Liberty. We have also made connections with a local fashion entrepreneur, Sakina O’Neill of Re-Runn and with the Royal College of Art who included us in their stakeholder engagement focus groups as part of their research into creating a regenerative fashion hub in Wandsworth.
Over the past year we have continued to produce work for other charities, some of our knitters producing chicks for Trinity Hospice’s annual fundraiser and we made textile picture postcards for Sprout Art’s postcard sale. As I write this, Oxfam Tooting is temporarily closed for refurbishment but we continue to meet and in the future we have plans to sell some of our work in the Oxfam shop. Watch this space!
A fabulous time was had by all at the Sew It, Show Picnic and Parade.
The event was a celebration of slow fashion featuring sewing, stitching, crafting, fixing, mending and swapping – a picnic and a parade!
The event bought together indivduals and community groups from across Tooting with workshops from Work & Play Scrapstore, Fabric Nation brooch making with Gillian, Junkaroo Face Painting, Ubuntu The Lion, Creative Ladies knitting and handicraft group from Tooting Market, a Clothes Swap led by BYO (donations can be left at their stall in the market) and TTT’s Sewing and Sanctuary group which offered a Boro Stitch Workshop plus stalls from My Old Girl & Me upcycled Bohemian, Indian and Irish influenced block prints and Caroline’s Couture designer inspired clothes and accessories.
The highlight of the event was our Slow Fashion Parade – here are the prize winners (details below)
1st Prize: Annie wearing a dress made from her 2nd husband’s first wife’s bedsheet, twinned with a crocheted white top she had made and a handbag in the style of Dolce & Gabbana, including snakeskin, though no snakes were harmed!
2nd Prize: Aniyah wearing a dress made from old ties by her grandmother Winnie who accompanied her with a hat with a tie headband.
3rd Prize: Jeni Walker-Lawes in a dress made from recycled saris from My Old Girl & Me, upcycled brooch and feathers from Wandsworth Oasis.
4th Prize: Hilary Jennings in a mint condition 35 year old T-shirt, dungarees from Tooting Age UK, charity shop Birkenstocks and bead necklace.
5th Prize: Suzanne O’Donnell for her medical waste corset worn by 3 year old Mila and her own handmade dress in 50s chic style.
And our Highly Commended paraders (details below)
Tenley and Lucy who had stumbled on the event and got an outfit in the Clothes Swap!
Phoenix made her own dragon inspired Halloween skirt paired with a Fabric Nation brooch.
Malsara wore a “skort”, a cross between shorts and a skirt made from a man’s suit jacket and trousers.
Charlie Zeus wore charity shop trousers made into shorts and an upcycled friend’s T-shirt while daughter Cleo wore a tie-dye hat and bag she had made, charity shop shorts and her mother’s reused trainers.
Sue from Transition Town Brixton wore a stylish jacket made at the Woodfield Pavilion from leftover ends of upholstery material.
Lucille wore a dress made from repurposed Film & TV stock trimmed with recycled African vintage textiles with Frida Kahlo and Venezuelan influences.
Alexandra wore a floral Zara dress and Skechers shoes from a charity shop
Judge Lucy from Eden Project Outreach was dressed banner cloak made by Woodfield Craftivists while compere David wore his pimped up suit jacket with tiger motif, repaired shorts and charity find shirt.
Great Prizes included 3 sessions with Taking Care of Fitness Personal Trainer, £50 behind the bar at Graveney Gin, a Frida Kahlo cushion, Sue Ure ceramics and Eden Project goodies.
The event was part of our Share & Repair project, supported by Transition Together with thanks to the National Lottery Community Fund and The Eden Project Big Lunch. It was organised by Meet & Make Spaces, Tooting., who run creative workshops and meet-ups in different spaces for the community of Tooting and beyond.
Come dressed in something you’ve made yourself, or repaired or bought in a charity shop, get ready to parade or support; join a sewing workshop or watch expert knitters and don’t forget to bring a picnic.
Our Share & Repair group are thrilled that the team behind Fixing Fashion in Tooting Market are back to present Sew It, Show It .
A celebration of slow fashion. If you sew or fix your own, or shop in charity shops, come along and join in our PARADE, or pose from the sidelines.
If like me you’re not quite there with the sewing we’ll have local people on hand to teach you to sew, local shops selling their upcycled clothes and the culmination will be a Big Lunch supported by the Eden Project, so we’re asking everyone to bring their favourite food and something to sit on for a Big Community Picnic.
Supported by Transition Together with thanks to the National Lottery Community Fund
Saturday 24th June – 1-4.00pm
All Saints Church Gardens, Brudenell Road, London SW17 8DQ
For all details, please contact us here and if you like Facebook we have an event page so you can keep up to date with everything as it unravels (like what I did there).
Find out more about our Share & Repair project including our regular Restart fixing and mending parties.
The group is really flourishing with about a dozen of us meeting above Oxfam every Friday morning. Alongside variously themed sessions, for a few months we have been working on a commission from Wandsworth Carers to make a banner for their new Iris Cafe, a group for people with dementia and their carers which meets monthly in the community hall of St Luke’s church, Ramsden Road. The completed banner was delivered to the group on 21st January and they were delighted with it. They particularly wanted the banner to be made from re-used materials and our group was well placed to deliver this. The strong backing fabric was sourced from the Work and Play Scrapstore and all other materials used were rescued from the recycling bags at Oxfam. Jeni visited the Iris Cafe in October to find out about the interests and memories of the attendees and she fed these back into the sewing group. This inspired the appliqué motifs made by individual members of our group, for example the tomatoes which one man used to grow in Jamaica, an artist’s palette and brush, for a man who was an artist, a cricket bat and ball and to represent music, vinyl records made from crochet! Nicola then visited the Iris Cafe in November to run an activity session making pom-poms and felt flowers. This was very positive as it encouraged the attendees to talk about their hobbies and interests. These items were brought back to Oxfam and added to the banner. Various skills were learnt by the group during the making of the banner such as using machine embroidery and how to appliqué. It was a truly collaborative project.
Late last year we held a celebration ‘bring and share’ lunch. During the session we used the ‘five ways to well-being’ principles to review our first 6 months as a group (Connect, Keep Learning, Take Notice, Be Active, Give). We made gifts and decorations from our lucky dip of pre-prepared craft kits. Members of the group brought in things they had sewn and we put lots of our work on display around the room. We were joined by Nelly Buscardini from Oxfam and Mary Hargreaves from Wandsworth Welcomes Refugees, and have since heard that our group has helped Oxfam become Wandsworth’s first ‘Shop of Sanctuary’.
The group also discussed what they would like to do in future sessions. Suggestions included learning about pattern cutting and clothes making. We also plan to do some visible repair sessions and upcycling of clothes. Other ideas are embellishing prints with embroidery and making cushions and tote bags.
The group is very mixed with a small number from our connection with CARAS, some of whom have introduced friends of theirs. Some women have been referred via Wandsworth Welcomes Refugees and others through connection with an art group held at Ascension church, Balham. Other members of the group are local women, many of whom got to know us through the Tooting Tapestry project. It is wonderful to see women learning together, sharing skills and helping one another. Women find companionship, a calm environment, creativity and a sense of achievement.
What a fantastic afternoon of fixing we had in our new Balham venue – St Mary’s Church.
Our trusty fixers tackled coffee machines and grinders, toasters, amplifiers, radios, hedge trimmers and even a keyboard!
Check out these fantastic pictures of some of the day’s successful fixes….
We were especially thrilled as three new fixers joined us to help out and we enjoyed lots of great conversation over tea and cake thanks to our new host Paula!
We’d particularly like to thank Berni Excell and all at St Mary’s who made us so welcome at this, our first event in Balham. We hope to alternate our sessions between Tooting and Balham from now on, extending our efforts to keep local e-waste out of landfill and giving broken objects a new lease of life!
Thank you to Stuart who helped me with my laptop and ps4 – unfortunately both need replacement parts so couldn’t get them entirely fixed today, but I feel much more confident in opening them back up and replacing the broken parts now, and I now know which parts I need and how to install them. This is a really great initiative!
Keep an eye out on ourShare & Repair Page and our Facebookpage for booking details of our upcoming sessions on 16th July and 24th September!
He was so interested in the way the PlayStation was being taken apart. I loved seeing him asking questions and trying to understand the whole process. He had fun and even made a friend.
Local community experimenters Gemma and Jeni trundled the Listening Cart back to school to capture the inner thinking of The Children (whom they believe are indeed our future). Together they looked at repair, what it means to different people and how it might connect us to others through the shared need to fix, not throw away our often immense collection of stuff.
As Gemma explained – we liaised with the art teacher and through her instruction the children from Year 3 brought in toys and objects from home that were broken.
We were amazed that every child had brought something in.
We introduced the session and ourselves and approached each object as a scientist would. We divided each class into small groups and asked each group to examine the broken object and come up with solutions as to how they could be fixed.
We were astonished at the extensive knowledge that the children already had on repairing. They came up with brilliant ideas with many regularly engaged in repairing with their parents and siblings. Perhaps we had considered they would be entrenched in the throwaway culture – but they really weren’t and had a really good understanding of the merit of repair and reuse.
This understanding would be gold dust for manufacturers. One boy said his trainers had broken three times already and he wasn’t very impressed. Perhaps they would take more note if they heard his opinions on something deliberately being made not to last.
