Repair as a driver of community-led behavioural change
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54337/plate2025-10402Keywords:
Social resilience, Repair-led design, Commons, Social impact, Co-designAbstract
Repair has been at the epicentre of place-based approaches led by communities/commons in order to sustain resources and address socio-environmental challenges. This paper presents the initiative Creative Industries, Social Enterprise, Repair and Restoration (CISERR) situated in regional Queensland, which is providing practical and social skilling to at-risk young men by employing creative repair practices. CISERR adopts repair as a wholistic approach targeting not only material restoration but also self and community renewal. To capture its social impact, all phases of the initiative were evaluated through an evolving Monitoring Evaluation and Learning (MEL) framework. The paper focuses on the third round of CISERR for which, the methodological approach and findings were divided in two parts. The participatory Narrative Inquiry (PNI) methodology was used for the first part while the Participatory Scenario Planning (PSP) method and a facilitators’ workshop were employed for the second part. Interviews and visual data collection were conducted for both parts. The findings combined demonstrated how CISERR facilitated the development of adaptation skills related to possibilities of employment by exposing at-risk young men to creatively repairing and reusing local resources. They additionally made evident how CISERR’s wholistic repair approach created the circumstances for a community to use its lived experience and place-based resources to support at-risk youth. The paper concludes with CISERR as an example of repair driving community-led behavioural change; the latter being a response to the growing need for social resilience and an antidote to the failed efforts by governments to activate individual behavioural change.
References
Bianchi, I. (2023). The commonification of the public under new municipalism: Commons–state institutions in Naples and Barcelona. Urban Studies, 60(11), 2116-2132. https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980221101460
Bartram, R. (2023). Routine dilapidation: How homeownership creates environmental injustice. City & Community, 22(4), 266-285. https://doi.org/10.1177/15356841231172524
Bonelli, C., & de la Cadena, M. (2023). Chilean Streets: An Archive against the Grain of History. In D. Papadopoulos, M. P. de la Bellacasa, & M. Tacchetti (Eds.) (2023), Ecological reparation: Repair, remediation and resurgence in social and environmental conflict (pp. 301-326). Bristol University Press. https://doi.org/10.51952/9781529239560.ch020
Burkett, I., McNeill, J., & Allen, M. (2020). Substation 33 Impact Report 2020. The Yunus Centre, Griffith University.
Colla, R. H., & Kurtz, C. F. (2024). Storying Research: Exploring the Benefits of Participatory Narrative Inquiry as a Methodology for Wellbeing Research. International Journal of Applied Positive Psychology, 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41042-024-00147-4
Corwin, J. E., & Gidwani, V. (2021). Repair work as care: On maintaining the planet in the Capitalocene. Antipode, 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12791
Denis, J., & Pontille, D. (2015). Material Ordering and the Care of Things. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 40(3), 338-367. https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243914553129
Dewberry, E., Saca, L., Moreno, M., Sheldrick, L., Sinclair, M., Makatsoris, C. and Charter, M. (2016). A landscape of repair. In: Proceedings of the Sustainable Innovation 2016. Circular Economy Innovation and Design., Towards Sustainable Product Design, The Centre for Sustainable Design, University of the Creative Arts, Epsom, Surrey, UK, pp. 76–85.
Estalella, A., & Criado, T. S. (Eds.). (2018). Experimental collaborations: Ethnography through fieldwork devices. Berghahn Books. https://doi.org/10.3167/9781785338533
Fawcett, S. B., Boothroyd, R., Schultz, J. A., Francisco, V. T., Carson, V., & Bremby, R. (2014). Building capacity for participatory evaluation within community initiatives. In Y. Suarez-Balcazar & G. Harper (Eds.), Empowerment and participatory evaluation of community interventions (pp. 21-36). Routledge.
Hervey Bay Neighbourhood Centre (2023). State of the Youth Report 2023. Hervey Bay Neighbourhood Centre.
Hickey, A., Riddle, S., McKee, A., Skye, D., Wallis, R., & Pocock, C. (2024). Youth Community Futures: Enhancing Opportunities for Young People in Regional Queensland. University of Southern Queensland.
Jackson, M. C. (2001). Critical systems thinking and practice. European Journal of operational research, 128(2), 233-244. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0377-2217(00)00067-9
Jackson, S. J. (2014). Rethinking Repair. In T. Gillespie, P. J. Boczkowski, & K. A. Foot
(Eds.), Media Technologies: Essays on Communication, Materiality, and Society (pp. 221–239). MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9780262525374.003.0011
Jones, H. P., Jones, P. C., Barbier, E. B., Blackburn, R. C., Rey Benayas, J. M., Holl, K. D., ... & Mateos, D. M. (2018). Restoration and repair of Earth's damaged ecosystems. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 285(1873), 20172577. 10.1098/rspb.2017.2577
Kalantidou, E., & Brennan, T. (2024a). Community Resilience by Repair: Skilling At-Risk Youth for Social Impact and Environmental Sustainability. In E. Kalantidou, G. Keulemans, A. Mellick Lopes, N. Rubenis (Eds.), Design/Repair: Place, Practice & Community (pp. 213-240). Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46862-9_9
Kalantidou, E., & Brennan, T. (2024b). Co-designing Resilience: Practical and Social Skilling through Place-based Repair. Diseña, (24), 5-5. https://doi.org/10.7764/disena.24.Article.5
Kalantidou, E., Keulemans, G., Mellick Lopes, A. M., Rubenis, N., & Gill, A. (Eds.). (2023). Design/Repair: Place, Practice & Community. Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46862-9
Kurtz, C. (2014). Working with stories in your community or organization: Participatory narrative inquiry. Kurtz-Fernhout Publishing.
Kuyer, P., & Gordijn, B. (2023). Nudge in perspective: A systematic literature review on the ethical issues with nudging. Rationality and Society, 35(2), 191-230. https://doi.org/10.1177/104346312311550
Lee, J., Hunter, J., & Franken, M. (2013). Story sharing in narrative research. Reo, Te, 56, 145-159.
Lepenies, R., & Małecka, M. (2015). The institutional consequences of nudging–nudges, politics, and the law. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 6(3), 427-437. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-015-0243-6
Oteros-Rozas, E., Martín-López, B., Daw, T. M., Bohensky, E. L., Butler, J. R., Hill, R., ... & Vilardy, S. P. (2015). Participatory scenario planning in place-based social-ecological research: insights and experiences from 23 case studies. Ecology and Society, 20(4). http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/es-07379-200161
Ozanne, L. K. (2024). Repair cafés: exploring collaborative repair. In Understanding Collaborative Consumption (pp. 68-81). Edward Elgar Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781035307531.00014
Papadopoulos, D., de la Bellacasa, M. P., & Tacchetti, M. (2023). Introduction: No justice, no ecological peace: The groundings of ecological reparation. In Ecological Reparation: Repair, remediation and resurgence in social and environmental conflict (pp. 1-16). Bristol University Press. https://doi.org/10.51952/9781529239560.int001
Perzanowski, A. (2022). The right to repair: Reclaiming the things we own. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108946926
Salvia, G., & Cooper, T. (2016). The role of design as a catalyst for sustainable DIY. Sustainable consumption: Design, innovation and practice, 15-34.
Siipi, H., & Polaris, K. O. I. (2022). The ethics of climate nudges: Central issues for applying choice architecture interventions to climate policy. European Journal of Risk Regulation, 13(2), 218-235. https://doi.org/10.1017/err.2021.49
Vélez-Torres, I., & Agergaard, J. (2014). Political remittances, connectivity, and the trans-local politics of place: An alternative approach to the dominant narratives on ‘displacement’ in Colombia. Geoforum, 53, 116-125. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2014.03.001
Villamayor-Tomas, S., & García-López, G. A. (2021). Commons movements: Old and new trends in rural and urban contexts. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 46(1), 511-543. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-012220-102307
Udall, J. (2019). Mending the commons with the ‘Little Mesters’. Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organization, 19(2).
Zeilstra, R. (2024). Nudging and the Safeguards of the Rule of Law. German Law Journal, 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1017/glj.2024.30
