The Liverpool Repair Cafe helping people to fix not ditch their broken things

Liverpool’s Repair Café is helping people to fix rather than replace things when they’re broken by holding free repair sessions every month.

Based at DoES in the Fabric District near London Road, the Repair Cafe uses the various skills of volunteers to mend everything from electrical items like laptops and toasters to furniture and bikes. The only potential cost is if any replacement parts are needed.

And as a community initiative, it also helps to bring people together to socialise and share knowledge and tips, so hopefully they go away knowing how to do the next fix themselves.

The group was set up towards the end of 2019 when some of the makers at DoES heard about the Repair Cafe movement, which started in Netherlands almost 15 years ago.

There are now more than 2,500 worldwide, helping to prevent broken items going into landfill and reducing the energy it takes to produce the new products which would be needed to replace them.

By extending their life, it also aims to give people more appreciation for the everyday things they own rather than seeing them as disposable, so it encourages a more sustainable approach. 

Mike Gorman, who is the organiser of Liverpool Repair Café, was a telecoms engineer for more than 30 years. Now, alongside a pool of volunteers of all ages, he uses that experience to solve breakdown problems.

“I think of myself as a generalist, but like a lot of our volunteers I’m also very practical so for me it’s like a glorified sudoku puzzle because you never know what’s going to come through the door on any day. It could be something you’ve never seen before in your life, but you’ve still got to get into it and try and repair it which is the challenge.

“We have around 15-20 volunteers who all bring different skills to the table including electrical, mechanics and furniture, so we can repair all kinds of things. The weirdest one was a full-size model of ET whose head had fallen off!

“A family brought him in, he’d been a prop in a shop and they’d managed to get hold of him when he wasn’t needed anymore, so we were able to put a copper pipe in his neck to put his head back on.”

Each Repair Café session, on the third Sunday of every month, lasts four hours and the team can typically get through 30 to 40 repairs in that time.

Some are more complex than others – toasters and vacuum cleaners can be the trickiest, whereas laptops might just need a good dust clean out.

 “Equipment can be designed to not be got into very easily, you can’t just pull plastic off and break it, and for others you just can’t get replacement parts, so we get some repairs which just aren’t possible.

“But we do have quite a good success rate, we probably manage to get through 55-60% on the day, and close to 80% overall when people come back with spare parts so that’s a lot of things that are usable again.

“Keeping items out of landfill is the top goal of Repair Cafe, and then there’s also the community part which is significant as well.

“For a lot of people, bringing something to us is an opportunity to get out of the house. So, if they’ve had a kettle for 20 years and don’t fancy buying a new one, they can bring it here, meet people, have a coffee and a talk which makes it a bit more of a social occasion.

“It’s also about informing and guiding people because we try to get them involved in doing the repairs, we don’t just ask them to leave whatever they have for us to fix. The ethos of the Repair Cafe is to try and get people to be able to do the repairs themselves so we give them tips, and ideally show them what we’re doing while we’re doing it.”

Mike says the popularity of BBC’s The Repair Shop means they’ve seen an increase in sentimental items alongside practical household ones.

“We’ll repair those if we can, but sometimes we do have to say no to some repairs because we’re not expert restorers. 

“Some things require specialist repairs, so we’re looking to partner with key specialists such as horologists for clocks and the doll’s hospital on Smithdown Road so if someone brings in something valuable we can refer them and they can get it fixed professionally.”

The next Repair Café is on Sunday March 17, 11am to 3pm at DoES, First Floor, The Tapestry, 68-74 Kempston Street. Free tickets can be booked via Eventbrite, and walk-ins are welcome on a first come, first served basis. More info here.

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