Oundle Repair Café

Oundle Repair Café is a free meeting place where gifted repairers work with visitors who bring in broken, damaged or worn-out items from home in need of care, attention, and fi xing. The next Repair Café will be on Saturday 9th July from 12noon to 3pm at Fletton House, Glapthorn Road, Oundle.

Repairees can watch and learn from the experts and, with help, make their repairs in the Repair Café. This ongoing learning process can include repairs on clothes, furniture, electrical appliances, bicycles, crockery, appliances, toys, to name but a few. If you have nothing to repair, you can enjoy a cup of tea or coffee, or lend a hand with someone else’s repair job.

As a throw-away society, we put a vast amounts of stuff into landfi ll… every day! We even throw away things with almost no fault and which could get a new lease of life after a simple repair. Sadly knowing how to make repairs is a skill quickly lost but for a sustainable future and a circular economy raw materials can be reused again and again.

That’s why at the Repair Café people with repair skills get the appreciation they deserve. Invaluable practical skills are passed on, and items 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. The Repair Café also teaches people to see their possessions in a new light and to, once again, appreciate their value. Repair Café volunteers also visit schools to give repair lessons, thus helping to change mindsets from an early age and to kindle 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, whether as a repairer, or a repairee.

Repairers’ are always needed. If you have skills in repairing items as diverse as patching trousers, fi xing old VHS recorders or cine cameras, or sharpening knives and scissors, please get in touch. Send an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., and someone will get back to you.