Proposed Awesome Liverpool FoM App

Proposed Awesome Liverpool App for FoM

Tell us about your awesome project!

The Festival of Maintenance is coming home to Liverpool for another celebration of those who maintain different parts of our world, and how they do it, recognising the often hidden work done in repair, custodianship, stewardship, tending and caring for the things that matter.

Maintainers can be found in many contexts, including nature, software, infrastructure, communities, industry, information, arts and heritage. The 2019 Festival of Maintenance will start a lasting conversation across communities of maintainers and stewards in Liverpool, building shared practices, and raising awareness more widely of the value of this work and where it sits within society.

The Maintenance Meal Deal

To make this conversation last we are looking to fund a Maintainer's Meal Deal to maintain the 100 people coming to share their knowledge & resilience. Liverpool is famous for it's friendly welcome often through the medium of scouse: which refers to how we speak in Liverpool and a hearty traditional meal.

We think it would be awesome to pay for a locally produced vegetarian, vegan & animal scouse and drinks and extend the maintenance story to the so-called 'broken' food system. Who do we know who maintains the food system in Liverpool? We want to fill stomachs to keep people thinking and as part of the deal think how they can bring together more maintaining networks locally.

In addition to this maintaining lunch, we will make...

• Specially designed and lasercut, writable, Maintainer Badges made locally with festival partner DoESLiverpool. The Badges let you write contact details of fellow festival participants that you will make a deal to carry on maintaining with even if it's just a promise to keep in touch.
• Donate any leftover food materials to a local foodbank (there are many in our city; we are lucky these maintainers exist but unfortunate that they must) and ensure any surplus is re-used by the scouse supplier or another group.

How will you use the money?

• Make 100 badges for approximately £1 per unit
• Make 100 portions of vegan and non-human animal scouse sourced locally with a food partner for £3 per unit
• Provide 100 locally produced drinks sourced locally for £1 per unit.

Volunteers at DoESLiverpool will design and fabricate special Festival Of Maintenance badges that include:

• Writeable section for maintainers you want to keep in touch with
• Info to access DoESLiverpool and details of festival & food partners
• Spread the maintenance love

Tell us a little about yourself

The Festival of Maintenance is a festival born in Liverpool in DoESLiverpool from the local and national makerspace community initiated notably by engineer Laura James and other DoES community members. DoES member & researcher Ross Dalziel and DoES co-director Jackie Pease have been helping support the Festival of Maintenance project which first took place in London 2018, now back 'home' to give a space to the resilient voices who maintain different parts of our world.

How does your project meet our four criteria? 1. Solve a problem. 2. Have a budget – and stick to it. (please detail budget)3. Bring joy. 4. Local.

1. Solve a problem

The big problem is how to make maintenance as exciting as the myths of the lone maker and disrupting innovator, which are increasingly in question. How we look after and tell stories about the material and social structure of our local worlds is arguably more important than what we do to make brand new; indeed without the unsung heroes of maintenance there would be no world to disrupt and no people to support new ideas. Nobody makes alone.

1. Budget. 100 people £5 per head for the welcome pack. Leftovers re-cycled or re-used or shared.

2. Bring Joy. Festival of Maintenance is non-profit and run on a tight budget. We'd like to be able to make it more welcoming and also consider the ethics of conference making, not do business as usual including how we feed and care for participants. We want to celebrate the joy of maintenance of relationships: the relationships between co-workers, community and the web of things that support us all.

3. DoESLiverpool want real impact from supporting the project as do the Festival organisers: we want this welcome pack to support this locally by

• Kick starting a local Repair Café or similar at DoESLiverpool
• Widen local networks to support each other, build and maintain local supply chains
• Once you think about maintenance you see it everywhere, We want to share and spread that story.