What began as a small initiative has grown into a movement. Fixit Clinics are local, hands-on repair workshops that now happen all over the world. Aside from reducing consumption and waste, these workshops serve as hubs for community connection and education, instilling confidence and equipping participants with the skills and knowledge to repair on their own. Jonathan Krones brought the first Fixit Clinics to the Boston area and continues to serve as a key organizer. Here’s the inspiration behind his efforts: 

“In my professional, academic life, I study the environmental impacts of materials and waste. When I was in school I was looking for ways to take what I was learning in my research and put it into practice in my community. We know that one of the best ways to achieve a sustainable, circular economy is to keep the things we already have operating for as long as possible -- a culture of repair avoids waste as well as unnecessary consumption in the first place. I discovered Fixit Clinics when the founder, Peter Mui, came to Boston to run an event at my university, and despite being an engineer myself, I was surprised at how many things could be fixed, despite all of the changes in design and materials that make them seem disposable and obsolete. A group of neighbors and I started running our own Fixit Clinic series in 2017, and it has grown from there into a network of hundreds of events across Massachusetts. 

Fixit Clinics are some of the most enjoyable and rewarding things I get to do. Even setting aside the environmental benefits of repair (which was my original motivation for participating), there is such great joy in seeing someone able to bring their item -- precious to them or just something picked up out of the junk drawer -- back to life. Community repair is neighbors helping neighbors learn problem solving, diagnosis, and repair skills together. Through these events I have made friends with people in different generations, social classes, and backgrounds that I likely wouldn't have had the opportunity to meet in the other parts of my life. Repair can be a great equalizer -- I learn from the attendees as, I hope, they learn from me. The motivations for attending a Fixit Clinic can be very personal, perhaps financial, environmental, or sentimental, but once we are there with screwdrivers in hand, all of those fade away and we get to work together in community to solve problems. Over the past decades manufacturers have convinced us to just trust them -- when something goes wrong, throw it away and buy a replacement. This is not true ownership. Fixit Clinics empower people to rediscover how to truly own an item, understand how it works, open it up, diagnose faults, find repair guides, source replacement parts, and bring it back to life. Even when an attempted fix fails, we are creating a culture of repair one broken item at a time.”

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