Repairing and regenerating the community

A study in activating garment repair initiatives with stakeholders at local level 

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.54337/plate2025-10407

Keywords:

Garment Repair, Circular Economy, Repair Skills, Community Repair, Socio-Material Practice

Author Biography

Anne Peirson-Smith, Northumbria University, United Kingdom

Anne Peirson-Smith, PhD is Professor of Fashion School of Design, Arts & Creative Industries, Northumbria University, with an industry background in branding and public relations. Anne’s teaching, research interests and publications cover sustainable fashion marketing, management and communication and fashion production and consumption. She has published numerous articles and book chapters on these topics and is associate editor of the Journal of Fashion, Style and Popular Culture (Intellect), and is on the editorial board of the International Journal of Sustainable Fashion & Textiles (Intellect). Anne has co-authored Public Relations in Asia Pacific: Communicating Effectively Across Cultures (John Wiley, 2010, new edition Emerald, 2025); Global Fashion Brands: Style, Luxury & History (Intellect Books, 2014), Transglobal Fashion Narratives (Intellect Books: 2018); The Fashion Business Reader (Berg/Fairchild Publishing 2019) and Customer Journeys in Fashion - From Linear to Multilevel, Palgrave Macmillan (Palgrave forthcoming 2025).

References

Bradley, K., and Persson, O. (2022). Community repair in the circular economy – fixing more than stuff. Local Environment, 27(10–11), 1321–1337. https://doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2022.2041580

Creswell, J. W. (2015). A Concise Introduction to Mixed Methods Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

Fenwick T. (2015). Socio-materiality and learning: a critical approach. In: Scott D & Hargreaves E (eds.) The SAGE Handbook of Learning. London: SAGE, 83-93. https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/the-sage-handbook-of-learning/book242764

Gwilt, A. (2014). What Prevents People Repairing Clothes?: An Investigation into Community-Based Approaches to Sustainable Product Service Systems for Clothing Repair. Making Futures Journal, 3, https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uSN81PEUEBiEAXWk4d9UBqdGUXinAIy4/view

Hargreaves, T. (2011). Practice-ing behaviour change: Applying social practice theory to pro- environmental behaviour change. Journal of Consumer Culture. 11, 79–99. https://doi.org/10.1177/1469540510390500

Hernandez, R.J., Miranda, C., and Goñi J., (2020). Empowering sustainable consumption by giving back to consumers the ‘Right to Repair’. Sustainability 12: 850. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12030850 .

Purvis, B., Else, T., Genovese, A., Jimenez, A., & Venkataraman Guru, R. (2025). Grassroots initiatives for a bottom-up transition to a circular economy: exploring community repair. Local Environment, 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2025.2467385

Van Der Velden, M. (2021). ‘Fixing the World One Thing at a Time’: Community repair and a sustainable circular economy. Journal of Cleaner Production, 304, 127151. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.127151

WRAP (2025). Displacement rates untangled: a standardised methodology. https://www.wrap.ngo/sites/default/files/2025-02/WRAP-Textiles-2030-Displacement-rate-report-REV1.pdf [accessed 10 March, 2025]

Downloads

Published

24-06-2025

How to Cite

Peirson-Smith, A., Wetherell, S. V., Singer, E., James, A., Irving-Munro, A., Mutambo, N., & Nicolson, S. (2025). Repairing and regenerating the community: A study in activating garment repair initiatives with stakeholders at local level  . Proceedings of the 6th Product Lifetimes and the Environment Conference (PLATE2025), (6). https://doi.org/10.54337/plate2025-10407

Issue

Section

Track 4: Repair, Care and Maintenance – Extended Abstracts