KoKo Upcycling Shop

WHERE:

Open Source Gallery, 306 17th Street, Brooklyn 11215

WHEN:

Opening day: 7/20/2020
Hours: Monday-Friday, 1pm-4pm

WHAT ARE WE OFFERING:

UPCYCLING SHOP

Open Source Gallery is a former garage with large carriage doors for an opportunity to have an indoor and outdoor workspace. Bring whatever you want and we’ll see what can be made. We recommend bikes, scooters, strollers or tricycles, but are open for other suggestions. Every item brought is a new, exciting challenge. Onsite repairs and modifications, a la KoKo style, will be a fun learning experience for staff, teens and participants alike. By collaborating, exploring and experimenting we will evolve responsively to the interests and desires of its participants.

In response to the Coronavirus pandemic, bikes have become an even more important part of city life, enabling people from all over the city to gather at demonstrations (without public transit), maintain social distancing while mobilizing protests, deliver food and supplies to immunocompromised neighbors, or just to exercise safely.

TINKER BOXES

KoKo summers are usually an exchange of ideas, imagination, skills and stories between kids, teens and adults. We want to continue connecting with the Tinker Boxes, made onsite, and put together offsite. Our crew will put together small kits individually to provide the basic materials for creative projects. These boxes will include basic instructions to guide the initial construction of a project but encourage your child to build further according to their ability and creative vision. 

In the spirit of mutual aid, kids will also be encouraged to create their own Tinker Boxes to share with kids from other communities, with an emphasis on reaching those who don’t have direct access to the KoKo space. The exchange of the tinker boxes, guided by the principles of Mutual Aid, will foster ideas, imagination, skills and stories.

WHY ARE WE OFFERING THIS NOW? In no particular order:

1. At KoKo, one of our guiding principles is the necessity for self sufficiency and collaboration. In the short term, we see the immediate need for these characteristics by way of long lines at bike shops, depletion of products in stores, and any other dependencies which might not be available due to the pandemic. In the long term, we recognize that self sufficiency is a skill which must constantly be in practice and is always in development. By fixing things, people can have the experience of self-sufficiency. 

1. Our ideas are motivated by environmental and social justice. For example, our concept of “TRASHure,” which aims to reorient the way we look at materials we often consider trash to imagine their potential use in new constructions, will be put to use as we encourage your trash donations which we treasure.

1. This summer, more than any other in the recent past, youth must have options for being actively and constructively engaged in meaningful experiences. Oftentimes, those experiences are facilitated through employment during the summer. With the development of these two programs, KoKo is creating employment opportunities for 6 youth.

1. We feel that it is our obligation as a cultural resource to our neighborhood to keep the city active and alive by bridging communities and working together. The KoKo approach to this is creating space for tangible learning moments which reaffirm to youth and adults alike that we all can be inventors, free thinkers, daring engineers, and storytellers. This space then serves to connect people (at a distance, of course) through the exchange of knowledge and ideas with fellow New Yorkers.

Ways to donate:

• Buy a Tinker Box!
• Donate cash!
• Donate materials!
• Get your ~vehicle~ repaired or modified and pay what you can! (NOTAFLOF – no one turned away for lack of funds)

What exactly is this money going towards?

• Staff and admin salaries
• Rent
• Offsetting costs for free Tinker Boxes
• Offsetting costs for the Upcycling Shop

 donate