About

The Brighton Repair Café is a community of people learning how to repair our things rather than dispose of them. Monthly events offer us the opportunity to bring broken items along to a place where the appropriate tools for repair are available and someone with knowledge and skills can give us advice on how to repair our possession. People who come to the cafe can learn new skills, or share their knowledge with others at the café in an informal social setting.

Rather than encouraging the creation of more material objects from our finite resources, repairing encourages a re-appraisal of the resources we have to hand. It highlights the skills required to repair, which will be lost if not put into practice and passed down through generations.

Repairing is not only a creative and political activity – creating a sense of empowerment and independence – it is also a way of creating community cohesion and reducing waste. We believe the repair cafe is an innovative and straightforward local solution to a global problem. It connects people from all social and professional backgrounds via one very simple activity – repairing

Brighton Repair Café is part of the Repair Cafe Foundation which was established by Martine Postma in Amsterdam in 2007.

Endorsements:

“The Brighton Repair Café presents an innovative approach to waste reduction, social cohesion and the transference of craft skills, through the act of repairing, upgrading and maintaining a broad range of products. With the ethos of collaborative learning at its core, this growing community of fixers will provide a timely opposition to our throwaway society – keeping goods in service for longer, cutting waste and building resilience into our relationships with the many objects that constitute our material world. Through seeding, growing and sharing craft skills, this project provides a forward-thinking solution to some of the thorniest issues of our time.”

Dr Jonathan Chapman, Professor of Sustainable Design in the School of Art, Design & Media, author of ‘Emotionally Durable Design’ and Co-Author of ‘Designers Visionaries and Other Stories: A Collection of Sustainable Design Essays

“I welcome the formation of a Repair Café for Brighton and Hove as it is an opportunity to extend the life of goods and to skill share. This is an opportunity for people to be more resilient in the face of economic and material hardship and fits in with the city’s One Planet Living ‘Sustainable Materials’ action plan being launched early in 2013.”

Cat Fletcher, National Freegle Representative and Head of Media, Resources Coordinator for Brighton Waste House and Brighton & Hove Environment Representative for the Community and Voluntary Sector Forum.