Breaks & Joins has been developing over the last 2 years, beginning with an open call to people who repair to send us films of themselves mending something, telling us about it, and answering the question; can everything be mended? These films reflect the memories in objects; the care people show each other by mending; the respect for the material and for the environment, and a resistance to a throwaway and un-mendable culture.
See the films here http://www.suemayo.co.uk/breaks-and-joins/
In 2020 we were part of The Being Human Festival, in partnership with Goldsmiths, University of London https://www.gold.ac.uk/events/fixing-it/. Lockdown was a challenge, but we were able to reach different people through practical and dialogue based online workshops, led by us, with Ali Campbell, Sudip Chakraborthy, Claire McDonald and Rose Sinclair. These ranged from intercultural tensions, to stitching and darning techniques, accepting the broken to talking to our neighbours. You can get a flavour of it here
In 2021 we got together with three community organisations in Lewisham, South London, and have been running workshops with them through the last 4 months, as well as participating in the amazing Hilly Fields Summer Fayre.
This has coincided with a gentle return to person to person work, which has been challenging for places and people, and has come into the many amazing conversations we’ve had.
Being active in and thinking about repair have been the most amazing starting places for dialogue, activity, anger, care and action, and we will be developing our activity through 2022-23. A short film that reflects our thinking about repair so far launches at the Telegraph Hill Festival in April, and our first series of podcasts , breaks_and_joins, interviewing people who are thinking about broken places, broken limbs, upcycling, mending, activism and arts as a vehicle for repair is out now, link below.