Change Making
Every day across the UK thousands of tons of domestic furniture is discarded. Some of it is genuinely worn out. Most of it is simply outmoded and thrown out because it doesn’t fit with an aesthetic, the confines of smaller, modern housing, or its owners want to change up their decor.
Amongst other materials, leather-covered seating and older, hardwood furniture regularly gets dumped in household waste recycling centre skips and from there the material is doomed to either incineration, landfill, or chipping.
We believe there is a better way
Whilst we are passionate about doing our bit for the planet, we aren’t rabid eco-warriors, ranters or moaning minnies. Our ethos is that change begins with each individual and the choices they make.
Makers & Menders is the result of a series of choices we made in the course of finding new purposes for unwanted materials that, we felt, still had the potential to be useful AND beautiful. So a nondescript 1970s’ bookcase becomes a series of chatoyant (that’s a posh word for shimmery!) sapele serving boards. A couple of 3-seater sofas becomes umpteen notebooks, water bottle slings, toiletry bags… and thus one person’s discard, becomes the solution to many people’s needs.
The UN have defined sustainability as
“Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
Regenerative sustainability - pretty much summed up in the Pete Seeger quote above - is a more radical approach which seeks to apply the principles of making things better, rather than simply supporting a broken system to stay broken.
By diverting materials destined for the waste stream, and giving them new life, we are able to design and make products that are themselves durable, reusable/refillable and at the end of their productive and beautiful life, recyclable. We choose to use predominantly hand tools, many of which are manual rather than powered. We’ve also invested in older tools as a means of future proofing. That may sound counterintuitive… but our Singer 29k patcher (treadle powered) and our mid-century pillar drill will be still be going strong when electricity becomes too expensive to use intensively!
About us
Makers & Menders was established in 2022 - born out of Ian’s pragmatic creative problem solving and Katie’s artistry and desire to explore working with different materials. As the title suggests, we’re both Makers, and we’re both Menders - and we can resourcefully turn our hands to many things, having adopted a magpie-like approach to acquiring new skillsets. We’re pretty much a two-person version of the Repair Shop!
We started the business in response to two stimuli. One was a growing number of people asking us to mend things for them. The other was Katie needing to change direction - after many years working in university admin she was ready for make time for creativity. We had some tools, a limited pot to invest in materials, and lots of ideas. After some experimentation we arrived at our core set of products and are now ready to expand our ranges.
Katie’s Story as Maker & Mender
Katie grew up in a household that favoured antiques over flatpack and craft over mass-produced. Her mum taught her to cross-stitch tapestries at the age of 3, followed by knitting, sewing and other textile pursuits, whilst she herself was learning crafts such as pottery and basket making.
In her late 30s, Katie discovered that her life-long jumping from hobby to hobby was actually down to neurodiversity and she now embraces her ability to move from technique to technique and project to project as a strength. She is able to work confidently with materials such as textiles, wood and leather and as an artist is passionate about colour and finding combinations that really pop… whatever the medium.
As a mender, Katie’s skills with needle and thread have really come to the fore in terms of patiently stitching old teddy bears back to life. She is a determined advocate of the merits of repair and repurposing - often using visible mending to embellish clothing to make it last longer, or to refinish a tired piece of furniture to make it desirable again.
Ian’s Story as Maker & Mender
Some of Ian’s earliest memories are of working with his grandfather, repairing bicycles. His father was an engineer and imparted the basics of workshop safety and practice to Ian at an early age. This led to the destruction of several mechanical objects as he tried to understand why they went whizz, pop or whirr…
When he was 12, his mother was heard to complain that the fan heater that kept her warm whilst she was sewing was broken. He took it into the garage, dismantled it, cleaned it, rebuilt and presented it back to her in working state. Her delight spurred him on and ever since, Ian has always had the desire to try and repair, build or make the things required for everyday life.
One of his key strengths is fly-building - literally building things from what materials are available at the time - and this has stood us in brilliant stead when it’s come to making things work for us as a micro-business.
Our environmental backgrounds & ethos
Ian
At the age of 15, Ian visited the Rance Tidal Power Station in France. This started the thought process that began Ian’s commitment to sustainability before it was even called that. Fast forward and Ian became a founder member of Transition Chesterfield. The group was used by the Transition Network as an international case study of best practice in terms of the skillshare workshops they set up. Ian was involved, leading wild food walks.
Through his work in local government as portfolio holder, Ian developed a deep understanding of planning, environmental, and waste management issues.
Katie
The natural environment has always been a focus for Katie. As a child, her parents were active participants in a range of nature and buildings conservation groups; as an adult, she was a member of local branches of Transition and other similar networks. Working in the academic research funding sector for nearly two decades also highlighted to her the need for collaborative research and development to find solutions to the planet’s problems in terms of materials and product design.
As an adult educator, Katie is well placed to share her experience and skills with others so that they too can be part of the solution as change makers in their own right.
Collectively, we bring together a wealth of experience, skills and knowledge which can help us to both effect change and inspire others.
Our vision is to be able to use our business to inspire others…
On the one hand, to make more conscious choices when it comes to purchasing products and discarding items which still have useful life in them; on the other hand, to inspire people to slow down and enjoy the possessions they have - extending the life of furniture, sentimental objects and other items by the use of mending and repair.
In an ideal world, we would love to visit the household recycling centre and not feel helpless despair at the wastage of valuable materials. Our hope is that we can find ways to work collaboratively to make change happen and make more waste useful and useable… before our future resources run out.