Repair Café Preston

In collaboration with The Larder and Repair Café International, Climate Action Preston have opened Preston’s first Repair Café! This is a free, monthly event.

The Larder Café, 55 Lancaster Road, PR1 1DD.

4th Saturday of the month, 11am – 1pm.

Alongside The Larder’s ‘Sustainable Saturdays’.

Since Covid restrictions eased, the Repair Cafe continues with its monthly offer.
Clothing and textile repairs have been done each time and electrical ones most times.
It would be great to have more repairers! Please get in touch if you can offer skills.

What is a Repair Café?

Repair Cafés are free meeting places all about fixing things together. You’ll find tools and materials to help you mend clothes, furniture, electrical appliances, bicycles, crockery, appliances, toys… You’ll also find expert volunteers, with repair skills in all kinds of fields.

Bring your broken items from home. Together with the specialists make your repairs in the café. It’s an ongoing learning process. If you have nothing to repair, you can enjoy a cup of tea or coffee. Or you can lend a hand with someone else’s repair job!

Why a Repair Cafe?

We throw away vast amounts of stuff. Even things with almost nothing wrong, which could get a new lease on life after a simple repair. The trouble is, lots of people have forgotten that they can repair things themselves or they no longer know how. Society doesn’t always show much appreciation for the people who still have this practical knowledge and their skills go to waste just like our broken possessions.

The Repair Café changes all that! People who might otherwise be sidelined are getting involved again. Valuable practical knowledge is getting passed on. Things are being used for longer and don’t have to be thrown away. This reduces the volume of raw materials and energy needed to make new products which cuts harmful CO2 emissions.

The Repair Café teaches people to see their possessions in a new light, to appreciate their value. It helps change people’s mindset which is essential to kindle people’s enthusiasm for a sustainable society.

But most of all, the Repair Café just wants to show how much fun repairing things can be, and how easy it often is. Why don’t you give it a go?

How can I get involved?

Email us: repair-cafe@climateactionpreston.org

All are welcome to bring broken items along to our free monthly events. Watch this space for details of our launch date and subsequent events, and consider booking a slot in advance to make sure you aren’t disappointed on the day. We might be busy, and as lockdown restrictions gradually lift, we want to be sure we are taking all government advice seriously, which limits the number of volunteers and customers we can have at one time.

Can you sew on a button? Rewire a plug? Tighten up bicycle bolts? Then we want you! You don’t have to commit to come to every repair event, but if you might have a couple of spare hours on an occasional Saturday, we’d like to hear from you. Alternatively, you might have some tools you’d like to lend us for our events which our volunteers or members of the public can use to make their repairs.

We would also welcome financial donations to help cover our running costs (including insurance).

Find us on facebook: @prestonrepaircafe