We’re going to be 1 year old in February!
On February 22nd 2023, with support from Repair Café Wales, we ran our first Repair Café in Cwmgors Community Hall and we haven’t looked back! We’ve been running one every month and support for it has been growing. The ethos of a repair cafe is to repair and reuse, minimising what ends up in landfill. Volunteer fixers offer their time and skills and when visitors come in with repairs, they are welcomed by hosts, offered a cup of tea and introduced to a fixer who can usually repair their broken item.
We have a great team of volunteer fixers from the community, and some funding from Pobl Trust for tools and equipment so it’s become such a buzzing community event that Welsh Government have featured us in their film! (Welsh version is here) Why not come along and bring something that needs repairing, or even come and help fix or host at one of our repair cafes? We’re very friendly and would love to see you!
Last year we held an extra-ordinary repair café in the local Primary school YGG Gwaun Cae Gurwen. Working with the pupils’ Eco Council, it focused on school uniform repairs with a few soft toys and the odd pencil case thrown in! The children were amazing, embracing the ethos of the Repair Café and made brilliant hosts! The 3 fixers worked tirelessly for the 2 hours, mending 27 out of the 28 items we saw!
The Repair Café group have also been involved in a global meeting of repair cafés (the Fix Fest) to share ideas and learn new skills. We met repairers from as far afield as Toronto! Overall, the feeling was that to repair is normal, it’s what people always used to do and we need to do this more again to reduce landfill and to support wellbeing and community.
We have also started offering mini free workshops at our repair cafe including IT support, machine sewing skills and bike maintenance so if you’d like join those do get in touch so we can let you know when the next workshops will be.
Sadly, we are saying goodbye (for now!) to the incredible Jo. She has been invaluable to the repair café, not only as a textiles fixer but Jo can turn her hand to anything it seems, fixing wooden trays, teapots, jars, cake stands, picnic blankets, teddy bears and of course, she is the Queen of Darning!
Wednesday 28th February,10am-1pm. (Last Wednesday of every month).
Location: Cwmgors Community Hall, Cemetary Road, SA18 1PS.
It’ll be our 1st birthday on Wednesday 28th February 2024 so do pop in for a fix!