I am interested in organising a repair community group up in the North East.
As far as I am aware, after extensive search, there are no repair cafe in this region and I am keen on setting up of our own.
However, I am clueless about how to create a repair cafe (including venue hiring, publicity, etc) so I would like to ask if you have any advice or guidance as to how I can make this plan into a reality.
I welcome your comments so I look forward to hear your thoughts and opinions!
Great to hear you’re interested in organising some community repair in the North East
I know of a couple of projects in the region that might be good places to start (depending where you’re based):
Before the pandemic, Fix it Cafe ran regular repair events and the Star and Shadow cinema in Newcastle. They may still do that, but their Facebook page is pretty quiet these days. They do seem to be working with a couple of other local initiatives such as Transition Town West Gateshead (TWiG) who are really active, and the ever-amazing Festival of Thrift.
I believe The Sill (the National Landscape Discovery Centre) hosts the occasional repair event. I think they last teamed up with Alston Moor Repair Café, who are a little further west.
Teaming up with an existing repair initiative is generally the best plan. Failing that, working with a different kind of community group or organisation generally works well (as they can often help with things like insurance and venue).
We’ve got a lot of information about how to start running community repair events in our restart-party-kit. This topic is a good place to start:
Of course, the Restarters community is here to help too, so once you’ve read through that topic above, do post back here with any questions you have
