THEY started with just a few spanners and screwdrivers, but the founders of a Scottish tool library are hoping they can inspire people to build a better society.

Opening on similar principles to a regular library, Glasgow Tool Library lends out handy bits of DIY equipment and runs workshops demonstrating how to use them.

As well as providing a social service, it is hoped the model will encourage people to think about the damaging effects of mass consumerism and private ownership.

Now with 500 tools ranging from sanders to expensive drills, lawnmowers and pressure washers, Glasgow Tool Library has 150 members and is launching its first public online talk this week.

It will feature three speakers who are fighting for alternative models of ownership that transform how wealth and power are distributed, changing how people relate to each other and to the environment.

“We set up the Glasgow Tool Library as a social and political project to promote communal forms of ownership and challenge our wasteful buy-use-dispose consumerism,” explained Chris Strachan, co-founder and events co-ordinator.

“Our private and profit-driven ownership models, whether that’s the ownership of land, resources, public services, products or knowledge, are environmentally and socially destructive. We need new forms of ownership for the 21st century, from the grassroots to the national level.”

While many people may never have heard of them, Scotland is actually a “hotbed” for tool libraries, according to Strachan, with the first in the UK established in Edinburgh in 2015.

“They are now popping up everywhere and we are planning a national conference at a fringe event at COP26,” he said.

Glasgow Tool Library was set up in 2017 as a community-led social enterprise and collective promoting sharing, collaboration, and learning as forms of “resistance, empowerment, and resilience”.

To use the service people can become members for an annual price of £20, allowing them access to hundreds of tools for repairs and renovations, gardening, craft and carpentry.

“We have everything you need – you could build a house, basically,” said Strachan.

The library is currently expanding its collection of equipment to sports and leisure, events and play. It welcomes donations and is looking for more volunteers as new members are joining all the time.

Said Strachan: “We want to challenge consumer habits and provide a service as convenient as owning so that we make borrowing better than buying. Our aim is to try and build a tool library across the city where people can pop out to their local tool library or have things delivered to them and it is as convenient and as easy as buying off Amazon but without the economic and environmental costs of everyone owning the same thing. We see it as a long-term alternative to our current wasteful society.”

There are also plans to open a community workshop where people can go to build their own shelving or sand down a piece of furniture.

In the meantime, Glasgow Tool Library is looking to connect with local communities and organisations, like community gardens, that could benefit from using the service.

Running events as well as lending is part of the service and workshops on carpentry and craft have been popular.

“A key part of the tool library is not just providing people with tools but also education and know-how on how to use them,” said Strachan. “There are barriers not just in terms of cost but in knowing how to fix things in your own home or make your own furniture. These are skills that have been lost.”

AS the workshops cannot be run at present because of the pandemic, it was decided to start a series of online talks to explore the principles behind the establishment of tool libraries.

“People interact with those ideas when they come to the tool library and think sharing is such a good idea, but we want to push those ideas more to the forefront and get people to question why we have these ownership models that are quite individualistic and quite economically and environmentally damaging,” said Strachan.

The three speakers on Wednesday are Dr Carey Doyle from Community Land Scotland, who will talk about urban community ownership, land reform, and the new Glasgow and Clyde Valley Community Ownership Hub; Thomas M Hanna, director of research at the Democracy Collaborative, who will speak about the future of democratic public ownership, reflecting on the ownership of new assets such as digital infrastructure and data; and Sabrina Chakori from the Brisbane Tool Library in Australia, who will talk about tool libraries and economic degrowth.

Glasgow Tool Library is based at 26 Civic Street, near Cowcaddens, and is open Wednesday from 5pm-7pm and Saturday 10am-1pm.

You can find out more about Glasgow Tool Library at www.glasgowtoollibrary.com