We run our popular Repair Café in the Hive on the last Saturday of the month from 10am to 1pm.
If you have any queries please get in touch with sustainability@dollarcdt.com.
The Dollar Repair Café is an antidote to a throwaway culture, and following its launch we run the café once a month from The Hive.
Tea, coffee and snacks are provided free of charge.
Come along and get your things repaired, and maybe learn a thing or two about repairing – no appointment required for most repairs.
If you have a bike or guitar, please email sustainability@dollarcdt.com to book, this will guarantee you a slot with one of our fixers.
There is no charge for any advice or repair, but visitors’ donations will help keep the service free at the point of delivery for everyone. Donations are used to cover costs and to help us offer additional workshops for free.
We have volunteers who can help fix:
- Small electricals
- Electronics (laptops/tablets etc)
- Small pieces of furniture
- Musical Instruments
- Clothes/bags/other fabrics
- Bikes
and much more! So bring along your broken items and one of our volunteers will do their best to fix it!
How does it work?
Repair Cafés are free meeting places and they’re all about repairing things together. As well as reducing what we send to landfill, Repair Cafes are also about sharing skills, and we are keen that where possible our volunteer fixers support the visitors to fix their item. We appreciate, however, that for more specialist fixing jobs the fixers will need to do it themselves.
What can be fixed?
We have volunteer fixers with a good variety of skills in the following: fabrics, sewing, electrical items, electronics. mobile phones, bikes, mechanical equipment, joinery, woodwork, furniture, toys, musical instruments and much more!
The process:
- Visitors will come to the Repair Café with a broken item(s).
- On arrival, the visitor’s item will be booked in at ‘reception’ and they will be directed to the appropriate table when the volunteer becomes available.
- The visitor will talk to the fixer about the item they would like repaired, and the fixer will help them diagnose and (hopefully) repair the item.
- If the job seems to be bigger than a ‘quick fix’ and should be carried out by a paid professional, the visitor will be told by the fixer that their item needs to be taken elsewhere. The Repair Café is not here to replace local professional services.
- The fixer fixes the item with the visitor (where possible) and everyone is happy!
Points to note
- Visitors will be asked to read and sign a Disclaimer and House Rules on arrival – before any repairs are carried out. This will explain there are no promises and no guarantees, but if something can be saved the Volunteer fixers will give it their best efforts.
- Visitors will be asked to give a voluntary donation; suggested donation will be between £3 and £5 depending on the size of the job. There will be a donation bucket to collect the donations at the door. It is anticipated that the donations will cover the costs of the Café, including any single use items.
- Care must be taken when handling electrical items. A full visual safety check must be carried out.
- The volunteers are not expected to fix anything they are uncomfortable with, and you are helping the visitor, rather than offering a professional service.
- If things come in that require longer than the Repair Café’s time to fix individual volunteers can offer to take the items away if they want and fix them in their own time – that’s an agreement between the volunteer and the visitor.
Check out our facebook and instagram page for event and workshop updates @SustainableDollar
Thanks again for supporting us to achieve our aims under our #SustainableDollar strand of activities
Testimonials
“Very happy with the concept and practice of the service which was friendly, knowledge-led and very helpful” – anonymous Repair Cafe user
“First time user and found the service to be fantastic. Derek really went out of his way to react to a specific request and exceeded expectations. Thanks Derek” – anonymous
