Bring broken items to new repair café

Bring broken items to new repair café

14 June 2023

WHAT do you do if you have something broken, torn or not working about the house? The answer, of course, is to take it to a repair café. 

The South Down Repair Café is holding a session at the Ballymote Centre in Downpatrick on Saturday, June 24.

A team of volunteers will be on hand free of charge from 10am to 12 noon to fix all kinds of items, including furniture, clocks, bicycles, ornaments, electrical goods and much more

Repair cafés are an entirely voluntary effort aiming to combat our throwaway society by fixing items for free and encouraging repair and reuse of broken items.

The South Down Repair Café is one of now 10 repair cafes taking place across Northern Ireland and the volunteers are confident the cafes will become a regular fixture locally.

One of the local organisers, Brendan Mulhall, explained how it works.

“Too many items that can be fixed are thrown away,” he said. “That costs people money and is bad for the environment.

“At our repair café, people can bring along their broken items and they can be examined, diagnosed and hopefully fixed by our volunteer fixers.

“We have people skilled in working with all sorts of items — textiles, electronics, mechanical, toys, bicycles, woodworking and ceramics.”

Brendan explained that the repair café isn’t a repair service. 

“A key focus of the repair café is in learning what is wrong with your item and how it can be fixed or not but also in building community connections,” he said.

“Whilst people are waiting for their item to be looked at we provide tea, coffee and cake and that helps people make connections and have a bit of craic.”

Brendan also explained that a repair café helps people to think about their consumer choices and the importance of having items that can be repaired and reused. 

He added that repair cafes are an entirely volunteer run effort and that given the plans for more cafés locally the team are actively recruiting volunteers.

Volunteers are needed with skills to fix items, to help with catering and to help with organising and coordinating the café on the day. 

Anyone interested in finding out more about volunteering get in touch with the team at southdownrepaircafe@gmail.com, or tel 07888 166565.