Our repair café is an event usually lasting 3 hours on the first Saturday of the month where you can bring broken possessions to be fixed by volunteer repairers. You stay with the repairer while the work is being done so that you can see the work being carried out and maybe help yourself. One of the goals is that everyone will one day be able to repair their own items.

There is no charge, but donations are welcome to help cover costs.

The repair café helps to promote learning new skills and to save waste by less items being dispose off in landfill. The first repair café was started by Martine Postma in Amsterdam in 2009 and its great success led to the Repair Café Foundation being established. The Foundation provides advice and help in setting up and maintaining repair cafés and also supports campaigns such as the “Right to Repair” laws requiring manufacturers to make it easy to repair their products and to provide spare parts for at least 10 years.

There are over 3,000 repair cafés worldwide with more than 300 in the UK and the number is growing fast all the time. For further information on repair cafés please visit:

https://www.repaircafe.org/en/

To watch a Repair Café in action please visit:

https://youtu.be/Ur2DH7wG6BY?si=be0A2-ZXcEFZlgvC

Please bring your broken household items and our team of skilled volunteers will do their very best to try to repair them. Items you can bring include:

• Bikes
• Computers/IT
• Clothing & Textiles
• Electrical
• Mechanical
• Jewellery
• Wooden items
• Upholstery
• Garden Tool Sharpening

We also offer a houseplant clinic and seed swap facility at the FaB Repair Cafe. Bring along your peaky looking houseplants and have the wonderful volunteers assess and offer advice on how best to rescue them! Whether it be yellowing leaves, root rot or bug infestation, they’ll be able to help you!

You can also bring any excess seeds you may have hanging around at home, and swap them for something new to grow in your garden! There are many seeds on offer, from vegetables to flowers - see what you can swap next month!

Some repairs may need a little more time and are best done in a workshop. Our repairers can help with that so please do bring your item along for our experts to see what can be done.

Please ensure that items arrive in a reasonably clean state, e.g. crumbs out of toasters, empty vacuum cleaners, and the grass clippings from lawn mowers etc. Please ensure that textiles are freshly laundered.

Donations are welcome to help cover our costs, which include public liability insurance, additional tools and materials.

When you arrive we will ask you to register your item and sign the house rules.

When it is your turn, you can sit with the repairer so that you can see how it is done and maybe also help and learn something new (and enjoy a drink and a piece of cake in the process!). Repairs are carried out free of charge by volunteers.

Can you help or know someone who can help? Do you have sewing skills? Are you good with electrics? Can you build a flat pack? We are always looking for help from more amazing volunteers for both repairing items and administration skills helping to run the café itself – if you would like more information please get in touch.

Our email address is: fabrepaircafe@gmail.com

Dorking

https://www.facebook.com/dorkingrepaircafe/?locale=en_GB

Epsom

https://www.facebook.com/groups/786507392173244/

Farnham

https://frc.cfsd.org.uk/

Godalming

https://godalming-tc.gov.uk/repair-cafe-godalming/

Guildford

https://www.facebook.com/RepairCafeGuildford/?locale=en_GB

Oxshott

https://www.oxshottnetzero.org.uk/repair-cafe/

Sutton

https://suttonrepaircafe.co.uk/

Walton on Thames

https://elmbridgeecohub.org.uk/repair-cafe/