Warminster’s Repair Cafe

Saturday saw the very first ever Repair Cafe at the Civic Centre in little old Warminster! Actually it was a first for the whole of Wiltshire 🙂

We had a team of expert volunteer fixers lined up:

• Verity Scott from Lace is More (and my co-cospirator for Make It Better!) was on hand to give advice on mending and alterations of any textiles and clothes
• Richard Hudson from Simple PC Help came along armed with various wizardry for fixing computers and laptops
• We had a great team from the Warminster Wobble, who were fixing bikes as well as giving them a quick once over and service
• Chris and Ken from the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust Volunteers Team were hard at work fixing broken electrical items
• My lovely hubby was our general handyman, armed with all manner of glues!

Emma and I had done a spot of baking so that the Cafe part of Repair Cafe was all taken care of, and we opened the doors for business!

Everyone was kept busy with good range of repairs, including:

• 2 bikes serviced and back on the road

• 1 slow laptop speeded up and de-bugged

• 1 picture frame glued back together

• 1 duvet cover repaired
• 1 long sleeved shirt made into a short sleeved one after it was caught in altercation with a hedge trimmer..!

• 1 kettle lid with it’s knob glued back on
• 1 lamp fixed and back working

We also had some sample packs of the wonderstuff that is Sugru to give away and talk to people about. Hubby and I took along a selection of things we have fixed with Sugru, to give people some idea of what it can do. We had some wooden railway with a new sugru ‘knobble’ on one end, hubby’s coat that he had made a new zip pull for, our very visibly mended fish salt pig thing, and our leaky jug that leaks no more!

In total we had 14 items ‘presented for repair’ and althoug there were a few items that were beyond the repair skills of even our talented bunch, these could be recycled at the local recycling centre, so at least they were saved from landfill.

We had lots of really positive comments, and reporters came from the Warminster Journal, the Wiltshire Times, and Warminster Community Radio.
I think once the idea catches on then we should have people queuing out of the door!

Thankyou so much to Emma Croft, Waste Minimisation Officer at Wiltshire Wildlife Trust, for all her hard work. And a HUGE thankyou to all our brilliant volunteer fixers 🙂

We are looking to set a date for our next one at some point in September.
In order for the venture to be sustainable, we do probably need to find a cheaper/free venue (elsewhere, Repair Cafes are often held in real live cafes or pubs)-if anyone with’local knowledge’ has any ideas, or indeed if you want to volunteer your services and skills as one of our fixers, please do get in touch.