Repair Acts

2018

Repair Acts is a pluralistic, artist-led research programme that explores repair, care, maintenance and healing cultures. 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 and practices to global flows, through policy, law, legalisation and international partnership.

Challenging the dominant narratives around ideas of ‘growth’, consumption and waste, our work reconsiders how we design, make and build things in the first place, so that they can last longer, be of better quality, support local livelihoods and wisdoms and respect the earth.

We explore such ideas by making and building art installations, performances and exhibitions and community events. We publishing texts (academic and other) and carry out desk based research. We aim to keep a vibrant and lively link between theory, practice, the everyday and the unknown. Most often our work, takes place in specific places and sites, with our concerns going from the local to the global and back again, through art and theory making, policy, law and legalisation and our international collaborations.

Further work on Repair Acts and its members, partners and collaborators can be found here.

In 2022, studio repair acts was established in Ireland, with a similar ambition but with a focus on working in rural contexts.