17
Jul
Repair Café to become a fixture of Ripon's calendar
This article is free to read. Help support independent local journalism for as little as 14p a day by subscribing to the Stray Ferret. You can get started here.
Clocks, hair straighteners and bicycle tyres were among the items mended at Ripon's first ever Repair Café at the weekend.
The event, which the Stray Ferret reported on in April, brings together people with things that need fixing and people who have the know-how to fix them, solving often long-standing problems and reducing waste at the same time.
Despite the high temperatures, the event's organisers were surprised – and pleased – when queues of people with broken objects started forming outside St Wilfrid’s Community Centre even before the Repair Café was open.
In all, 28 items were brought in for repair during the three hours the Repair Café was open, including dresses, vacuum cleaners, gloves and a lantern.
Volunteers have all kinds of practical skills.
Organiser Laura Sharpe said:
Ripon Repair Café was set up to promote an ethos of repairing household items, rather than them going to landfill. It is very much a community event, taking place every two months, and offering complimentary cakes and drinks to people while a repairer looks at their item.
It mirrors the Harrogate Repair Café, which has been successfully running in Harrogate for over a year.
A pair of hair straighteners was one of the first items to be mended at the Repair Café.
The first Repair Café was conceived in Amsterdam in 2009, by journalist Martine Postma. In 2010, she started the Repair Café International Foundation, which now supports more than 3,300 Repair Cafés around world, including the one in Ripon.
Others can be found in locations as far-flung as Bolivia, Iceland, Kazakhstan, Ghana and Thailand. In the UK alone, there are more than 400.
The Repair Café in Ripon has a team of volunteer repairers who have mechanical expertise and skills in electrics and electronics, metalwork, leatherwork, laptops, bicycles and sewing.
A happy customer with the gloves he had repaired.
Not all items can be repaired, but repairers will offer advice and signposting where possible if an item cannot be fixed.
The Repair Café does not charge for items to be repaired but invites people to make a donation to cover its running costs.
Ripon’s next Repair Cafe will be held at St Wilfrid’s Community Centre on Saturday, September 13, from 10am to 1pm.
Harrogate Repair Café is held on the third Saturday of each month at the Friends' Meeting House on Queen Parade. The next one will take place on July 26.
0