Cambridge Repair Cafe

Contact us

E-mail: cambridgerepaircafe@gmail.com

The idea for Cambridge Repair Café started when we found out about Royston Repair Café, who pioneered the idea locally. A Repair Café was a natural successor to repair skill-share events already organised by Transition Cambridge and Cambridge Carbon Footprint. Our first Repair Café was in May 2014. Back then we genuinely didn’t know whether anyone would turn up, but they did and our bi-annual repair cafe now sees around 70 items per event.

Cambridge Repair Café had arrived! Since then we’ve worked with South Cambs District Council and Cottenham Repair Café to support sustainability groups set up Repair Cafés in their villages. We think our Cambridge Repair Café cluster is the biggest in the UK.

We’ve been greatly helped by local company Mackays who got together with Drapers Tools to provide us with a toolkit that’s available for local Repair Cafes to borrow.

When we started, we thought that Repair Cafés were just about stuff – fixing more and throwing away less. But we’ve discovered that they’re just as much about people. Repairers often say that the best thing about repairing is people’s reactions when something is fixed. People of all ages and backgrounds come along because they genuinely want to move away from our throwaway culture. And some people turn up for tea, cake (always available!) and a chat just to be part of a friendly community event.