BOVEY Tracey's Repair Cafe is back this weekend, for a morning of tea, tinkering and trickery.

Bring your broken items to the cafe and the skilled team of volunteer repairers will do their best to fix them.  You can see how the item is tackled first hand and learn how to mend things yourself.  Those who come in can expect to enjoy tea, cake and a natter while you wait.

Bring your broken household items for free repair this Saturday (15th July ) - 9:30 - 12:30 at Methodist Church rooms in Bovey Tracey.

Bovey Repair Cafe stated: 'Meet our wonderful volunteers, have a drink and a cake while you wait. Includes bike repair, laptops, knife sharpening, sewing, toys craft items and electrical.'

Repairs are free, and donations are welcomed.

What is a Repair Cafe?

Repair Cafes are free meeting places and they’re all about repairing things (together). In the place where a Repair Cafe is located, you’ll find tools and materials to help you make any repairs you need. On clothes, furniture, electrical appliances, bicycles, crockery, appliances, toys, et cetera. You’ll also find expert volunteers, with repair skills in all kinds of fields.

Visitors bring their broken items from home. Together with the specialists they start making their repairs in the Repair Café. It’s an ongoing learning process. If you have nothing to repair, you can enjoy a cup of tea or coffee. Or you can lend a hand with someone else’s repair job. You can also get inspired at the reading table – by leafing through books on repairs and DIY.

The idea of the Repair Cafe was initiated by Martine Postma. Since 2007, she has been striving for sustainability at a local level in many ways. Martine organised the very first Repair Cafe in Amsterdam, on October 18, 2009. It was a great success. Since then, the Repair Cafe has become a worldwide phenomenon, with Bovey's starting in the summer of 2022. Besides Bovey Tracey, there are Repair Cafés in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France, the United States and in dozens of other countries around the world. Repair Café has even made its way to India and Japan.

Why a Repair Cafe?

We throw away vast amounts of stuff. Even things with almost nothing wrong, and which could get a new lease on life after a simple repair. The trouble is, lots of people have forgotten that they can repair things themselves. Especially younger generations no longer know how to do that. Knowing how to make repairs is a skill quickly lost. This is a threat to a sustainable future and to the circular economy, in which raw materials can be reused again and again.

That’s why there’s a Repair Cafe! People with repair skills get the appreciation they deserve. Invaluable practical skills are passed on. Things 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. It cuts CO2 emissions, for example, because manufacturing new products and recycling old ones causes CO2 to be released.

The Repair Cafe teaches people to see their possessions in a new light. And, once again, to appreciate their value. Repair Cafe volunteers also visit schools to give repair lessons. In both these ways, the Repair Cafe helps change people’s mindset. This is essential to kindle people’s enthusiasm for a sustainable society.

But most of all, the Repair Cafe just wants to show how much fun repairing things can be, and how easy it often is.