Repair (with) me

Repair (with) me

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1VhZIT2NiG9a7iIMg1vWQnSDvprs8XV_i?usp=sharing

How the project was born
The project was led by the educative Team of Norrbottens Museum, Luleå, North Sweden during the autumn of 2021. It was a kind of “spin-off“ of a big exhibition about sustainability called “We are a planet“. The project was conceived from the beginning as an urgent action tool to palliate some of the most serious psychological effects of the COVID Pandemic on the young population of the city. Because of the lockdown of the high schools and universities, they were especially affected and damaged by long-term periods of isolation at home.

Keeping in mind the acquaintance and interest of this Gen Z in the recycling and reparation culture we decide to connect two aspects, apparently disconnected; reparation and dating. Our main goal was to motivate an outdoor activity for them using a workshop on reparation and reuse as an excuse to match couples with similar interests and fondness. The idea was to create a favorable context where they feel comfortable and safe to initiate a conversation and even in some cases a face-to-face friend relationship. And of course, repair something important for them to reuse it.

How the work has been received
The project was supported by a local council psychologist and some high school teachers and university professors who cooperated helping us to know in deep each one of the student’s stories. All of them were fundamental to having a proper idea about their fears, and threats but also about their interest and passions. You can see the kick-off meeting in the pictures.

All this information was key to matching the suitable profiles and facilitating the connection between them and guaranteeing the duration of the process. They were committed to assisting at 3 sessions and accomplished their reparation process according to the planned schedule. Sessions were led by a reparation expert and observed in a nonintrusive mode by the psychologist. Finally, all the repaired objects were shown in a temporal exhibition created and guided by the participants.

Impact
The Pilot Project was initially planned for three months (from September to November 2021). It engaged 13 young people from 16 to 19 years old affected by anxiety, stress, and two cases of depression. All of them were geeks and love the tech stuff. All of them (except one case because of illness) covered the totality of the process. All of them continued their relationship after the workshop and were the mentors of the next cohort. Repair (with) me was established as a permanent program at the Museum to support the collective young mental health using the circular economy as inspiration and driver.

#Collective_Resilience #Mental_Health #Reparing

The project could be considered as a local resource based in three different ways:

- First of all and most importantly involved all the potential broken or damaged objects of the community. From a hole in jeans to a deteriorated shelve, from an old ceramic cup to an iPhone 11, from a Star Wars T-shirt to an old picture. That has an immense impact on the more efficient way of using and consuming everyday objects. prolonging clearly their life cycle.

- Secondly, the local resources, and the people involved: from educators to social therapists, from families to policymakers, from researchers to experts in different fields. The project was based on a true local-knowledge network that supported crucially the good path of the process. This informal/formal network was pivotal to knowing in deep all the complex biographies of the students and their fears, connections, and expectancies.

- Finally, they create a new local resource -a whole new exhibition- without any new material added. All the labels and displays were recycled from previous exhibitions. They demonstrate that you don't need to produce anything extra (and get an energy supply) to do relevant community-centered things with mid-long-term impact. The most relevant resources were the improvement of the wellbeing of the students and the relationships built from their interactions.

The continuity and scalability of "Repair (with) me" were linked to:

- The young participants. After the first edition of the workshop, they come back this time as mentors to welcome the new cohort of the next edition. They assume voluntarily fundamental tasks such as informing, sharing their experience in a very close and personal way reinforcing the group at critical moments, showing their reparations as good examples, tutoring and guiding, inviting friends and potential participants living suffering similar circumstances, etc. This was pivotal for the program continuity because this time the recommendation came from "one of them".

- The researchers. From the beginning, the program was a research-centered approach vital for local physiology and social therapy experts. It was a kind of Zoom for them to "dive" into complex processes that were occurring in the community in a very silent, hidden but dangerous way. The project was an opportunity to emerge a very hard reality, confront it and start to move forward consciously and with young consensus. Some of the main outputs were published in prestigious international scientific journals. The fact that the Museum was a part of a bigger health regional organization was important to achieve this level of involvement.

- The educators. Teachers, Professors, and Tutors were a cornerstone of the process. Many of them spent their personal time making connections, providing critical information, and helping psychologists to face some important challenges. They build a whole comfortable atmosphere to listen, connect and recommend. They were some of the most important allies to think of the program in the long term involving more and more high schools even considering the possibility to extend it to lower ages.

On the one side, the program has immense potential in terms of waste reduction or elimination prolonging the material culture of the community. Is a true breakpoint regarding the program obsolescence culture/mindset. Things are perceived as something to maintain and preserve as much as possible because of all the immaterial values involved: stories, memories, codes, rituals, etc. It is a way to preserve the collective identity.

On the other hand, tech stuff reparation was a powerful way to build an ecological global consciousness. Young participants were conscious of the extreme unfair behavior of technology throwing in terms of planetary environmental impact. Some of them started to be involved in some NGOs focused on western electronic pollution in some African countries used as landfills.