Some final thoughts for 2025…

Goodbye, 2025. What a year it’s been!

It’s been a year of major change — not just for Mechanism, but for everyone and their communities across the country. Collectively, we’ve experienced a lot of challenges. For some, hardship has been in no short supply.

Yet at the same time, as we traveled around the country to meet with the people in our programs and our broader network during the Mechanism launch event series, we saw a lot of beauty, collaboration, and promise at the local level. People are choosing to come together time after time to envision a better present and act toward a better future.

Mechanism’s tagline is “community and connection” for a reason. We want to be a catalyst by helping people build production ecosystems that lift up the places we love and creating new types of economic models that are designed to elevate humanity, not just profits.

We’re honored that you spent some time with us this year — whether by attending our events, coming to our webpage, listening to our podcast, reading this newsletter, or speaking with us about your work. We’re fortunate to be surrounded by great people with ideas that give us hope for 2026 and beyond.

Before we sign off for the year, we’ve got a couple things to share with you below. Some new resources were just published by our staff that make for easy reads and easy listens. They’d make great companions for any winter travel, if we may say so ourselves!

“Being an Active Participant in How We Shape our Community”: Insights from Asheville and Oklahoma City

Alongside our Mechanism launch events in Oklahoma City and Asheville this year, we hosted two local program convenings.

Tied to our Worker Voice project, we hosted the “National Forum on Engaging Employers & Workers” in OKC with our project partners. In Asheville, members of our Asheville Local Lab joined us for “Rising Together: Advancing Food & Beverage Product Businesses in WNC.”

Whenever we’re lucky enough to bring the minds of our program participants to the same place to talk about challenges and strengths of community-based production ecosystems, it’s a major learning experience for us — and we want to share that experience with you.

As a resource for our network, we’ve put together short recaps highlighting the top themes, lessons, and analysis shared by program participants at these events. Their conversations revealed insights on topics like:

• The value of reciprocal relationships over traditional supply chains, especially in the face of major business challenges.
• How manufacturers in Western North Carolina turned the crisis of Hurricane Helene into an opportunity to examine their purpose in their markets and communities.
• How engagement of workers to improve retention can’t be a single one-off event — it requires that companies pursue an entire culture change.

Read our newly published Oklahoma City recap here and our Asheville recap here.

Listen to the Entire First Season of the Mechanism Podcast

The first season of the Mechanism Podcast has officially wrapped up! Season 2 drops on January 15.

Over this season’s five episodes, co-hosts Vincent Sagisi and Andrew Dahlgren have interviewed some of the brightest textile and flexible goods manufacturing leaders to give us an inspirational look into:

• How small-scale manufacturing leaders are addressing labor, sustainability, and innovation
• How textiles and soft-goods manufacturers are reshaping their industry with ethical practices
• How workforce development is meeting workers’ needs to create the next textile workforce
• The people, processes, and innovations keeping materials (and value) out of landfills
• The guiding principles of success followed by leaders in sustainable textiles

The five episodes are available now anywhere podcasts are available. Listen here.

Mechanism Interview on THAT BUSINESS OF MEANING Podcast

Mechanism's Co-Executive Director Nepal Asatthawasi and Director of Program Strategy Tanu Kumar recently sat down with Peter Spear (who helped lead the branding process that led to Mechanism!) for an interview on his podcast THAT BUSINESS OF MEANING.

They shared some great insights about Mechanism's vision for manufacturing, our push to help manufacturers better engage and retain workers, and how, when she was little, Tanu wanted to be a dancer on Soul Train. 💃

Thanks for having us on, Peter! Listen to the interview here.