Topsham Repair Café

Aim

A Repair Café allows you to find out if a broken item can be repaired before you decide to throw it away.

A Repair Café allows you to find out if a broken item can be repaired before you decide to throw it away. This has the potential to save you money, reduce waste, and conserve the resources & energy needed to manufacture new items.

A Repair Café is run by volunteers who have suitable electrical, mechanical, sewing and other specialist expertise. You can bring along a broken item and the Café's volunteers will, where feasible, repair your item in your presence. You can enjoy a hot drink and home-made cake while you wait.

Café sessions bring together people of all ages and backgrounds. They help to maintain repair skills across the community, and to promote mental health and social inclusion.

When you bring an item for repair you will be asked to make a donation, which will contribute to self-funding the Repair Café. 

What happens at a Repair Café?

Volunteers with a range of skills meet on a regular basis and attempt to repair the items brought into the Café by its visitors. This may include:

• clothes - darning, hemming, buttons
• electrical goods - vacuum cleaners, bedside lamps, toasters ..
• electronic gadgets - radios, headphones, printers ..
• toys and furnitur
• pedal bikes and scooters
• jewellery and accessories
• any other specialisms offered by volunteers

A typical Repair Café session lasts 3 to 4 hours. Repair volunteers spend between 30 minutes and 1 hour on each repair. The Café does not usually accept items that can't be carried by one person, are very precious or would require more than 1 hour to repair.

Visitors can watch their item being repaired if they want to, and if the volunteer is comfortable with being watched. There's also an opportunity for knowledge transfer between repairer and visitor.

A team of supporting volunteers meets and greets visitors, makes sure the operation runs smoothly and keeps everyone topped up with refreshments.

Not all repairs are successful, but experience shows that visitors are very grateful for any attempt regardless of the outcome. The Café operates on a not-for-profit basis, and all donations (minus expenses) are forwarded to a worthy cause as chosen by the collective.

Volunteers are covered by liability insurance, and visitors are asked to abide by a set of House Rules to minimise risk to the Café's organisers and participants.

This project closed unsuccessfully on 16th December 2022