So, Mend is born after a monumental 24 hours in which we have come clean, got 2 board members under our belts, the blessing of some of our favourite people, had some beers to celebrate and still enough time to slot in a hangover and dinner with a regeneration legend.
We now breathe a spark of life into a project that started out as a bored trip to the office kitchen to get a procrastinatory glass of water! Life is all about these little segments.
This blog will chart our experiences growing a social enterprise in difficult and extradordinary times in the UK and the future of our cities. We will bare all: the ups, the downs, the why's the how's and the people we will meet along the way that will make Mend work.
Mend moves away from space as "container": inert and waiting to be filled with stuff - to space as fecund, real and organic: alive and teeming with personality, energy and emotion. Place is the spatial "self" - with all its complex meanings, identities and conflicts.
Mend is about reconnecting people to places and understanding the complex interactions between them - to reinvent them and make them work for us. Seeing the city and urban environments as extensions (not just reflections) of the life that happens around it. We don't believe that places and spaces are just the stuff architects and planners do - they are ours; we live in them, they belong to us and should speak of us.
But they won't unless we get involved. Mend exists to provide a platform and route for people - anyone - to reconnect with their space, place and city.
Tell us what you think! Vent. Spout. Clamour. Disagree. But don't moan. Get involved.
Kate & Liane
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