WHAT IS REPAIR ACTS IRELAND?
Repair Acts, Ireland aims to foster vibrant and restorative repair cultures in Ireland by connecting past stories about mending and fixing things, with what we do today, to how we envision the future.
We do this by creating contexts for dialogue around restorative futures through making and building art works, carrying out desk and applied based research, designing and developing art exhibitions, workshops and conversational spaces.
Working deeply at a local level, within landscapes and infrastructures and in association with communities, governing bodies, craft, artisan, skilled trades and other professions, we connect local wisdom to global flows, through policy, law, legalisation and international partnership.
Established in 2022, our work in Ireland has focused on the midlands county of Westmeath. Across the county we ran over 40 workshops and events on mending, fixing and restorative practices and cultures. We held a 4-day festival (3-6th Nov ’22) in Kilbeggan, where our documentary ‘Turning the Collar‘ was premiered, alongside new mixed media art works that reflected on the relationship between repair economies, professional trades, heritage and craft practices, climate action and materialism.
Documenting changes in local repair economies, we mapped the types of mending professions in Westmeath from 1938- to now, with this work, informing our exhibition programme and art works.
Over 2023, we will be working to transition from this project-based approach to creating a more sustained programme of activities in Ireland.
