UNBROKEN.SOLUTIONS - MARK PHILLIPS
Festival Exhibition
Location: TBC
Open: 1st October - 31st October 2025.
Unbroken.Solutions: Recovered copper and metals after 'burning' electronics ©Mark Phillips
unbroken.solutions is project dedicated to the importance of repair and reuse as part of a sustainable society.
We used to value our ‘things’. They were precious. They were created from scarce resources and hours of human endeavour.
But a combination of consumerism and mass production has led to ‘things’ of shorter life, of less perceived value and that are much harder to repair and thus, keep working.
To compound matters, our ability to repair these things has faltered, driven by limited access to knowledge, lost skills, and an approach to product design with embedded technology that inhibits repair.
Even the legal framework is not fully supportive of a right to repair your own things, despite some recent moves.
Unbroken.Solutions: Fixing Factory, Camden, UK ©Mark Phillips
Confronting these challenges, this project takes a constructive or solutions approach; to identify and shed a light on the repairers, re-users, activists, and solution providers, as exemplars. We already have many solutions; we just need to act.
Unbroken.Solutions: Repair Cafe, Reading, UK ©Mark Phillips
As part of the project over 30 copies of the unbroken photobook has been sent to government department, councils and local authorities with suggestions for things they can do (often for free) to improve our repair and reuse capability.
ReTuna is a shopping mall in Eskilstuna, Sweden, which exclusively sells second hand and recycled goods. It is situated next to the town's recycling center. ©Mark Phillips
The overall aim is to point to ways we can all make better use of what we have and to build a more sustainable future.
MARK PHILLIPS is a documentary photographer. His work documents stories about society, the environment and sustainability, and those working to find solutions to our current challenges.
Recent projects explore the climate crisis and the importance of sharing, repair and reuse as a response to creating a more sustainable future. As part of the repair project he ran a campaign to inform councils, local authorities and government on the importance of supporting sharing and repair. His work is also used to support repair advocacy and the ‘Right to Repair’
He is currently working on projects exploring borders and Europe’s remaining national enclaves, as a multi-layered narrative to explore the complexity of this patchwork of territories in terms of their geographies, symbolism, absurdities and peoples.
He has been published online and in print in various major newspapers and magazines (including BBC News, the ‘I” newspaper, Observer, Zeke, La Repubblica). His work has shown at festivals and exhibitions in UK, Italy, Netherlands and USA.
His studies have taken him from engineering to a PhD researching complex ecosystems. Mark is a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and a member of The Photobook Club Collective.
All festival exhibitions are FREE to visit.