About repair cafés
A repair café is a regular event where members of the public can bring in worn, damaged, or non-working items and volunteer repairers will try to fix them. Repair cafés are normally non-profit, volunteer-run events and held in community spaces. They generally do not compete with professional repair services; people often bring items to a repair café because they are not practical or cost-effective to fix professionally.
Why repair?
Repair is more than just “fixing broken things”. Canberra repair cafés have been known to sharpen knives, install new batteries, take in and let out clothes, update computer software, and even give haircuts. Repair is about extending the useful life of your stuff—any kind of stuff.
Repairing items instead of buying new ones saves money, prevents waste and reduces landfill. It also reduces emissions: from manufacturing, from transport, and from the landfill itself.
The repair movement
The repair movement is active around the world. In addition to organising local events to build communities and preserve repair skills, repair advocates work to defend the right to repair.
To learn more about the repair movement in Australia, visit the Australian Repair Network, headed by Dr Leanne Wiseman from Griffith University.