Repair Café champions

The Sidmouth Repair Café returns tomorrow – Saturday 28th May, 10am – 1pm @ Manstone Youth Centre:

Sidmouth Repair Cafe – Posts | Facebook

As part of a series of Sustainable Sidmouth Champions Award articles looking at ‘Education for Sustainability, Education for Hope’, here’s a look at the ‘educational’ aspects of the Repair Café – and how they work for sustainability and build up hope.

Here’s a very interesting interview on exactly these topics:

In her dissertation at the University of Klagenfurt, Caroline Gigleitner, who also initiated a repair café herself, examined the question of how lifelong learning can contribute to a good, mindful, and sustainable life. To this end, she investigated repair cafés as centres of learning. In the interview, she discusses her findings.“I was actually quite amazed by the degree to which the knowledge that is learned is incorporated into people’s everyday lives and what a positive experience the visit is considered to be.”

EPALE Interview: Repair cafés as centres of learning for a sustainable life | EPALE

Here’s another piece which puts all these points together:

Toss it? No way! Repair Cafe is a non-profit organization that aims to inspire sustainability at the local level. While specialists volunteer to repair broken belongings, participants can pick up on hands-on skills.

Repair Cafes Inspire Hand-On Learning, Reduce Waste, and Strengthen Community Bonds | Machine Design

If we look at ‘sustainability’ and ‘hope’, a study from Exeter Uni considers Repair Cafés as full of promise:

Research news – Repair cafes and “20 minute neighbourhoods” should be used to revitalise Cornish high streets – University of Exeter

And if we consider their ‘educational’ aspects, this is very much what Repair Cafés are all about:

What is a Repair Cafe? – Sustainable skills & lifestyle

As the original Repair Café website tells us:

Visitors bring their broken items from home. Together with the specialists they start making their repairs in the Repair Café. It’s an ongoing learning process. If you have nothing to repair, you can enjoy a cup of tea or coffee. Or you can lend a hand with someone else’s repair job. You can also get inspired at the reading table – by leafing through books on repairs and DIY.

Furthermore, people who visit Repair Cafés are not usually customers of repair specialists. They say that they normally throw away broken items because paying to have them repaired is, in general, too expensive. At the Repair Café they learn that you don’t have to throw things away; there are alternatives.

About | Repaircafe

Let’s finish by going to Amsterdam, where it all started and where we can see that it’s all about ‘learning for sustainability, learning for hope’:

Repair Café in practice – YouTube