Handled With Care (HwC) is a Brisbane based project promoting a “repair and share” practice and culture. Its objective is to make visible the local culture of repairing and sharing and support recycling, upcycling and responsible discarding of electronics. To do so it provides an open access to a constantly updated map of facilities and services and to an experiential forum where sharers, repairers or people who want to give a second life to their goods can exchange information, ideas and experiences. Skills are recognised to be an important aspect of this endeavour. The ‘how to’ related to fixing, mending, preserving and reusing can be offered by people from different age groups, cultural and educational backgrounds. Sometimes, these people are not professionals or don’t even know their skills are needed. For that reason, Handled With Care has been running repair workshops in collaboration with local organisations such as MDA, Culture In Mind, World Wellness Group and Brisbane City Council so as to bring to the fore hidden skills possessed by immigrants and locals. Another aim of Handled With Care is to create a community able to enable circular economies by maintaining things for as long as possible, retaining the value of materials via reuse, using less resources and minimising waste. To support this cause, the research aspect of the project is documented and presented in publications and conferences.
In brief, the platform is a medium to connect to our ability to maintain and embrace usage instead of ownership. We strive to empower communities and we invite collaboration between HWC and similar endeavours.
If you have an enquiry about the project or are interested in collaboration, please contact us here!
Chief Investigator: Dr. Eleni Kalantidou
Design & Research: Felicity Walsh
Software Engineer: Petros Nyfantis
Handled with Care: The Blog 