Why a Repair Café?
An important part of managing our collective resources responsibly is the now well known adage: Reduce, Reuse, Refill, Repair & Repurpose, Recycle.
To support our community to Repair & Repurpose more, and waste less, a merry band of skilled volunteers gather in the halls of Buxton Methodist Church on the Market Place once a month ready to repair all sorts of things. Our Repairers are also keen to share their skills and encourage more people to get the fix-it bug.
It’s called Repair Café because we fix things alongside the Saturday morning cafe in the Church, so you can bring items along for repair and enjoy Fairtrade refreshments at the same time. We are grateful to our hosts at the Methodist Church for accommodating our team and embracing it as part of their community activity.
The monthly Repair Café sessions are held between 9:30 and 13:00 (last item in 12:30pm) on the 4th Saturday of the month at the Methodist Church on Buxton Market Place.
No charge is made for repairs, just donate what you can afford and feel is fair to help cover the costs of room hire, etc. We ask all Repair Café users to read and agree to our ‘House Rules’:
We have been proud to repair some treasured items including ornaments painstakingly restored to almost-new by Gill (our ceramics expert), a few old clocks and a beautiful wooden bagatelle board. Other objects given a further lease of life include sewing machines, vacuum cleaners, radios, CD-players, lamps, hairdryers, toasters, hedge-trimmers, bicycles, a pair of battling robot toys, a Scalextric set, shopping trolleys and a drone! Not to mention numerous replaced zips, buttons, darned holes, and patched trouser knees. We are fortunate to have such a skilled group of fixers, who enable us to help so many people.
Part of a Number of Growing Networks
Buxton Repair Café is one of many around the world, and part of UK and wider networks of repair enthusiasts including:
- Repair Café International https://www.repaircafe.org/en/
- Restart Network UK https://therestartproject.org/
- I Fix It https://www.ifixit.com/
We are also part of a mutual support network of Repair Cafés in the Midlands and North West. There are now regular Repair Cafés in lots of places including; Macclesfield, Tideswell, Chesterfield, Eyam, Leek, and Belper.
Repair Café in the News
In August 2022 Jean Ball was interviewed about the repair café on Radio Derbyshire, have a listen –
Support us
If you would like to make a donation to our Repair Café please click the button below:
