On Saturday 15th February 2020, The Repair Café Abergavenny will be joining thousands of others across the UK in hosting a Big Fix 2020 event at the Abergavenny Community Centre, 11am – 2pm. We are taking part in Britain’s Biggest Repair Café to raise awareness of Repair Café’s and help promote the work they do. We hope to see you there!
Repair Cafés are places where volunteers fix and mend things, for free, while you wait. That’s it! Very often, all that is needed is a simple repair which just takes a little bit of know-how and some time. At Repair Cafes, we mend all manner of things – typically clothes, household electrics or general items, woodwork, children’s toys, furniture, and bikes. We can’t guarantee that we will be able to fix everything but we will give it a go and you can pick up some simple repair skills at the same time.
There are currently 109 repair cafes registered in the UK, many here in Wales, with more opening every year. The Repair Café movement started over 10 years ago in the Netherlands and to date, there are over 1000 worldwide.
Repair Cafés have lots of benefits which generally fall into these areas:
Economic – Repairing our possessions extends the useful life of the items and can save us a significant amount of money over time
Environmental – Repairing reduces the amount of waste going landfill and reduces our use of precious, raw materials used to manufacture new items. Repairing is also preferable to recycling: a process that can take an enormous amount of energy Social – A regular Repair Café session can stimulate civic pride and strengthen communities by bringing people with shared interests and values together.
