Despite repair work being essential for sustainability, repair faces undervaluation and challenging economic and working conditions. Through collaborative workshops, stakeholder engagement and interview with repair practitioners, and art-driven innovation reseearch, the project developed a Fair Practice Framework (research project), a Case Study (education purpose) and a Future Repair Labor Imaginaries (vision statement on the 30-minute Repair Society).

In4Art leads the Future Imaginaries workstream, investigating artistic developments related to repair work and labor transitions to help shape new perspectives on the value and future of repair work. We are involved in the co-development of a Fair Repair Code centred around workshops to explore Fair Product, Fair Work, and Fair Repair Culture principles, ultimately to establish frameworks for ethical repair practices. Our contribution resulted in a 30-minute Repair Society vision and input for the research paper.

This essay presents the 30-minute Repair Society, a comprehensive urban framework designed to revitalize repair culture and combat the throwaway mentality that has dominated since the 1960s. Drawing from historical repair traditions and contemporary circular economy principles, we propose a four-node ecosystem that makes repair accessible within a 30-minute timeframe for urban residents.

Research paper based on the research lead by Ilaha Abasli, International Institute of Social Studies (EUR) on valuing labour in repair, understanding the implications of a circular just transitions in Rotterdam. It proposes a Fair Repair Practice framework, consisting of 3 main themes: 

• Fair Product Cycle:  the material aspects of repair, including spare parts accessibility, repair feasibility, required skills, and enabling legislation. Key challenges include the rising costs of spare parts, constraints related to their availability, and technology barriers.
• Fair Work:  repair viability through the profession and supported by education, fair pricing strategies, sustainable business models, and job satisfaction. Critical issues include declining craft education, pricing pressures, and limited recognition of repair as valued professional work.
• Fair Repair Culture: repair’s diverse and community-embedded nature, encompassing customer education, sustainability awareness, and respect for various repair identities across different neighborhoods and cultural contexts.

The LDE Thesis Lab ‘Future of Repair’ is a joint initiative of Leiden, Delft, and Erasmus Universities. The lab is aimed at master’s students who focus their research and graduation projects on concrete, practical repair issues. This forms the foundation for meaningful research. The Lab recognizes that knowledge about ‘how to repair’ is much broader than what students can acquire through their own research. In4Art founder Lija is appointed as academic coordinator  and, therefore,  organizes five thematic enrichment sessions in 2026: intensive sessions where practice, research, and policy converge, and where we explore a specific aspect of the repair issue in depth.

Why this approach? Repair isn’t just a design issue or a legal framework: it’s about the interplay between design, economic systems, regulations, logistics, psychology, and culture. Each session highlights a different aspect, but the question remains the same: how do you put this into action? What are the barriers? Who needs to be involved to make repair successful? This is an opportunity for students, but also for the involved caseholders, the repair coalition, and the LDE knowledge network to explore these issues together.

If you are interested in attending such a session, please contact the repair community mananger

Fiar Repair Research: International Institute of Social Studies, EUR / RSM Case Development Centre, Rotterdam School of Management / TU Delft; Design for Sustainability and Circular Economy group / Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication
LDE Thesis Lab: Centre for Sustainability Leiden-Delft-Erasmus

Start: October 2024

Commissioned work

The Fair Repair research and 30-minute Repair Society vision was conducted as part of The Resilient Delta Kick-Starter grant program, specifically under the project ‘Valuing repair in just labor transitions in the Rijnmond region’.