so I'm here today with Janet Gunther of
the restart project and you came all the
way out here to California from London
and we've been friends for a long time
but a lot of people that might not be in
the UK aren't very familiar with the
research project so I wanted to get you
here and and share what you're doing
because this is just absolutely amazing
so the research project you hold local
events that enable people to fix things
yeah there are three our drop-in events
they're free for the public and
volunteers help people fix their broken
stuff so how did you get started doing
this well when I my business partner and
I ago we we heard about the repair cafe
and Holland Google and I had been
working in Africa and Latin America and
Asia bringing technology into community
development projects and seeing how
people took such great advantage of
every last little thing they had from
from an extension cable to you know a
pen to hard drive and when we come back
we just see people throwing stuff away
and very environmentally conscious
people to like the kind of people you
wouldn't expect to be doing that so
we've been this has been an issue for us
for a while and when we heard about the
repair cafe we thought we'd like to do
our own version of it which is super
focused on electronics and really builds
a movement towards better relationships
with electronics so tell me what is a
typical event look like so you do them
in the evenings we do some on weekday
evenings and then some on Saturdays and
we get more kids coming to those so
those are fun what's kind of the process
yeah so ours is um it's very informal
it's an ad-hoc event but the only thing
you really need to do is check in so
there'll be somebody hosting sometimes
it's me I'll find out what's wrong with
your device ask you some basic questions
and then I'll pair you with a volunteer
repair who's skill set that I already
know so what made you decide that repair
was the thing of all of the problems in
the world why are you focusing on on
getting more people fixing things well
for us it I mean repairs away into a
much larger topic which is our
relationship with our stuff with
technology there's just so many
different pieces of it that just don't
quite feel right and so repair is the
easiest way but what we'd love to do is
start kind of help people understand and
connect all the dots but for
it's also a critical moment it's a
moment of you know financial and
environmental crisis and one thing I
think people kind of ignore here in the
u.s. is that our consumption patterns
and the accelerated way in which we
consume is a massive contributor to
climate change what do you think is
behind this trend I just think that
we've reached just a level of
frustration and kind of an alienation
from the stuff we have that I think
there was an inevitably gonna be a
reaction against it
it doesn't make sense that you should
have to replace your toaster every
couple years replace your radio it just
it and it something about it doesn't
feel right for a lot of people so if I
wanted to get started if I you know
wanted the host an event or have some
friends over what would be your
recommendation okay we have we have a
guide to get to getting started you can
find it on our website which is the
restart the restart project org slash
restart party and essentially what you
need is people who want to organize a
venue that's big enough that has a
library or yes we've done it in
libraries
so usually working through an existing
local group okay you can do that and we
have some advice about how to get
started so what are you thinking is
coming up next whether your plans for
this year yeah for this year we'd like
to work a lot more with teachers and
educators and we're creating some
materials they can use in like in middle
schools and secondary schools and we'd
like to also work more with maker spaces
and maker so figure out ways to kind of
to create more more kind of more events
events that are more appropriate for
their spaces so our events are quite big
and loads of people come but we'd like
to experiment a little bit with like a
drop-in session a drop-in night where
people get advice from one or two people
that makes a lot of sense well I am
ecstatic to see what you do next it's
been phenomenal to see you go from an
idea and and you know we've been talking
for years about doing this and you've
gone out there and done it
and you're having such a huge success on
the ground it's really encouraging I'm
very encouraged by but what you're
having
and it's certainly I mean I've seen you
in the BBC I've seen you in public
policy circles like it's amazing what
like just this simple local act of let's
get together and fix some stuff it's
really starting to have ripples around
the world
well it's our own idea was always to
start locally and that if we were to
build anything it had to start with
people taking action people doing stuff
together and that's that's the that's
the kind of the green the beginning of
the seed yeah and it's been working so
well so thank you so much for your work
and keep it up Thanks