Listening in Repair : A Mending Circle for Relational Care

Bennett, Sam and Stead, Michael and Cull Ó Maoilearca, Laura (2026) Listening in Repair : A Mending Circle for Relational Care. In: Design Research Society 2026 (DRS26) : Explorations. Design Research Society, GBR. (In Press)

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Abstract

Mending offers a rich site for design inquiry because it shows how judgments about visibility, restraint, dignity, and reversibility are negotiated in real time through material engagement. As a practice between care and intervention, mending foregrounds reciprocal relations among people, materials, and the systems shaping continued use. Working with damage brings to the surface the values and assumptions guiding decisions about maintenance, worth, and interdependence, enabling repair to challenge dominant narratives of efficiency or newness. Listening in Repair is grounded in previous mending research workshops framed through care aesthetics, understood as a relational, embodied, and socially embedded practice. In this exploration, the mending circle incorporates listening – to materials, to one another, and to the environment, and guides how participants mend. Participants work with worn textiles while noticing how touch, visibility, pace, and intensity shape material outcomes and ethical relations. Rather than focusing on technique, participants align mending gestures with their own research orientations. Through shared practice and listening encounters, the mending circle becomes a site where researchers build on method‑first approaches in design research to surface how repair practices negotiate value, care, and continuation, and how these negotiations may challenge prevailing assumptions about aging, maintenance, and interdependence. This format emphasizes experimentation, shared inquiry, and non‑textual knowledge, using embodied and aural‑material processes as primary modes of research development.