After running together from our Parliamentary Restart Party, we had the pleasure of chatting with Marie Lefebvre and Divya Pujara of the Leicester Fixers. Together they have been hosting Restart Parties in Leicester for a year now.

Marie is a researcher at Loughborough University, and she focuses on how and why owners of gadgets repair them - or do not. After studying marketing and then design for sustainability, she became more interested in this less-studied area of the circular economy and started her Phd. With a friend, she decided to host a "Festival of Making and Mending" last year, and was convinced that electronics repair should be a part of it.

She sought help from Leicester Hackspace, where she met Divya, an electronics engineer and teacher who had been contemplating hosting a "repair surgery". Leicester Restart Parties were born.

Their story is really inspirational.