Journal
Karen Bently Brown of Repair South Lakes and Future Fixers sharing about repair cafes.
Community Repair Cafes
Beccy Whittle
This article was first written for FoodFutures: Closing Loops Reduce, Reuse, REPAIR event that brought community members together around ideas of repair in August 2024. It highlighted repair cafes and ways to make them work, and how to involve individuals and organisations.
Every year, many everyday objects from clothes to toys, furniture and electronics get thrown away because they are broken. Unfortunately, throwing things away creates more problems than it solves. There’s the financial cost involved in buying a new replacement item, the waste generated by the item’s disposal (yes, even WITH recycling) and the larger amount of waste that comes from the manufacture of its replacement in hazardous and poorly paid conditions.
Thankfully, there’s an alternative – repair! Repairing things helps us save money, take back control of our relationship to everyday items, combat the waste mountain and build community enterprise. Here in the UK, there’s a whole emerging repair movement which includes free community repair events and skillshares as well as local businesses, social enterprises and, of course, the popular TV series The Repair Shop.
Today, we’re looking at the different forms that such initiatives can take in the hope that this might inspire you to think about what could be possible in YOUR area!
First up, there’s the community-led repair movement which focuses on the provision of free community spaces where householders can bring broken items and be supported by expert volunteers to fix them on the premises. Repairs are free, though donations are encouraged and, in addition to saving items from landfill, there is a focus on empowering people through providing them with the knowledge, skills and inspiration needed to go out and spread the word about fixing in their communities.
Today, there are community repair projects all over the world, including a number here in the North West: there are currently initiatives in Kendal and South Lakes, Cartmel and Grange over Sands and, this year, the Closing Loops project has been running monthly skill share workshops on topics including bicycle, small appliance and IT repair. Lancaster and Morecambe Makers regularly support people with all kinds of repairs during their weekly open evenings.
Support, advice and helpful templates for those wanting to set up their own repair cafe as well as details of local groups can be found through groups such as the UK based Community Repair Network and the international Repair Cafe websites.
People often worry that community repair projects will take trade away from repair professionals. In fact, the reverse is true. Repair cafes help raise awareness about alternatives to our throwaway mentality. And such projects can even actively drive trade TOWARDS existing repair businesses. For example, Brighton Repair Cafe has found sewing machines to be time consuming and challenging to repair in free sessions, so those with broken machines are directed to the local repair professional.
There are also some fabulous examples of projects like The Edinburgh Remakery that have combined free community repair sessions with the establishment of a social enterprise, generating income from providing more complex repairs for customers, refurbishing and selling on donated items and offering talks and workshops for corporate clients. Other initiatives have set up as charities, an example being The Restart Project, which aims to tackle the climate emergency by making electronics work for people, for the planet, and for longer.
What does the repair scene look like in the place where you live? If you’re based in North Lancashire you can find a list of a number of community repair cafes and meetups on our Refuse Waste Directory page. If you know of or run a similar meetup we would love to add it to the list, please get in touch through the form on that page.