Scavenger Labs

Scavenger Labs contributed to The Iron People programme led by Northern Broadsides through workshops and public outputs in Todmorden.

At Todmorden College, Mick Chesterman ran a campaign workshop with students exploring environmental themes, particularly flooding. Steve Summers recorded audio contributions from participants, capturing local stories and campaign ideas developed during the sessions.

This material was developed into campaign content and presented as part of the Gush / Trickle showcase event at Gordon Rigg Garden Centre, Walsden.

We’re really pleased to share a new self-study course developed through a collaboration between Scavenger Labs and RISE at Manchester Metropolitan University.

This course grew out of hands-on workshops and creative making sessions we’ve been running for years, and also from a moment of change. During lockdown, we adapted our space at Scavenger Labs for filming, working with Steve from Noisy Toys and with Greta supporting the setup. What emerged was not just a filmed course, but a reflection on how our practice translates into digital formats.

Making the Family Fixit Campaign with Ferney Lee School. A group of campaigners, artists and educators came together with the schoolchildren and staff at the school to create an environmental campaign to reduce waste.

This report describes what we did and what was valuable about the processes we used. It is aimed at other educators who may want to take inspiration from our activities and perhaps reuse them in their own way. The report covers the three main phases of the project

• Phase One - Fun and active workshops with recycled waste
• Phase Two- Social Action workshops to create a campaign
• Phase Three - Communicating the Campaign

Caption - campaign check list

Press Release – For immediate Release

Todmorden Makery A Big Thank You to Todmorden

We have been awarded Town Council grant funding to establish a community workshop located in Todmorden Community College.

Following the success of the pre-covid monthly Repair Café , Mick Chesterman decided more could be done to create a long-term space for people to make, create and repair, as well as provide a home for like-minded community focused projects.

Mick said

“Todmorden Makery is a community workshop for repairing and making all manner of things located in Todmorden Community College. One of the leading contributions to climate gas emissions are the textile and electronics industries. This project encourages repairing objects, sharing tools and spreading knowledge of repairing.

Buggy Battles

Buggy Battles is now full but please contact - steve (at) noisytoys (dot) org - if you would like to take part in futures rounds. This will be the first of what we hope will become a regular event. Buggies built from recycled materials and controlled by portable programmable devices will battle and race against each other. All participants will get experience at coding and Making and together we can start to build more intelligent, complex and brutal buggies for the next round. Workshops, resources and support will initially be available online through lockdown.

Watch us smashing up a printer and disecting a flashing trainer to find out more about e-waste HERE on the Bradford Science and Media Museum youtube.

50 Million Tonnes

…of electronic waste was produced last year. More than ever before, more every year. We buy more, it breaks more quickly, and more of it piles up in the poorest parts of the world.

In this film we learn the way of the Scavenger: all this e-waste is free stuff that we can learn to hack and use for our own inventions. We can learn how the technology works, about where the materials come from and where the waste goes to and what we can do to help the situation. Just maybe we can figure out what are we supposed to do with that drawer full of dead tech that we all have at home.

Date: 26, 27, 28 October - 11am, 1pm, 2.30pm

Free, but booking essential

Family bubbles can sit together.

Book HERE on the Bradford Science and Media Museum Website.

50 Million Tonnes

…of electronic waste was produced last year. More than ever before, more every year. We buy more, it breaks more quickly, and more of it piles up in the poorest parts of the world.

Will technology destroy our planet or could it give us the solutions we need? -

In this show we learn the way of the Scavenger: all this e-waste is free stuff that we can learn to hack and use for our own inventions. We can learn how the technology works, about where the materials come from and where the waste goes to and what we can do to help the situation. Just maybe we can figure out what are we supposed to do with that drawer full of dead tech that we all have at home.

An estimated 54 million tons of electronic waste are produced annually and we hope to draw people’s attention to this issue, as well as to the consequences of obtaining the materials (including conflict minerals) and disposing of the waste after a very short life-span of usability.

Young people are very receptive to this message as it is often young people in developing countries who are involved in the mining and the waste processing, working in difficult and dangerous circumstances. Young people in rich countries like the UK are subjected to intensive marketing to obtain the latest electronic gadgets and games, which contain more and more sophisticated surveillance tools to profile their user’s lives, and are designed to produce habit-forming behaviour in even very young users. Yet we have less and less control over -or understanding of- the workings of our technology. Often, the technology seems to control the user now, instead of the other way around.

Photo Gallery of second repair cafe in Todmorden Feb 2020.

Photo Gallery of first repair cafe in Todmorden 23rd Nov 2019.

Todmorden Repair Cafe

23rd Nov - 12.00 - 16.00

Free Event at the Masonic Hall, White Hart Fold near Train Station.

A repair cafe is when volunteers come together to fix visitors things in a friendly cafe style setting. You can even just come along for a brew and a chat.

Find out more at repaircafe.org - or our facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/todrepaircafe