A Repair Café you say? What's that!?

For many of us in North America, we have the world at our fingertips and can solve nearly any problem by opening our pocketbook. We can easily meet our needs and satisfy our desires by heading to the nearest big box store at a moment’s notice. While this has led to very comfortable lives, it has also resulted in us losing touch with how the world works and how things are produced.

When a chair breaks, we’re encouraged to buy a new one. A ripped sweater is simply an excuse to go to the mall. And we seem to go through electronics faster than they can even break. Version 5.1 just came out after all. 

Repair Cafés started in Netherlands about eight years ago to change this culture. They are part of a wider movement to help us see value in the products we throw away, and think about the resources we waste, the skills we are losing as we move to an automated society, and of the community we too often take for granted.

                                                       Fixing in action at the Repair Café at Sheridan College, April 2014
                                                       Photo credit: Chris Coutts

Those are the same goals for the Quinte Repair Café, goals that have been replicated in similar Repair Cafés in Toronto, Calgary, and Peterborough so far this year. By repairing our old items, we give them new life, develop our own skills in the process and really come to appreciate what goes into the production of our everyday items. As an added bonus, we’re doing it in a community setting and getting to know people from the area!

So how can you repair everything from toasters, cell phones, lamps, sweaters, quilts, jewelry and much more? By coming out to the inaugural Quinte Repair Café at the Core in Downtown Belleville on Saturday October 25th from 12-4PM! You bring the stuff and we’ll match you with a repair specialist (we call them “fixers”!). If it can’t be fixed, we will point you in the right direction for where to get parts and what the next steps are.

This page will be updated a couple times every week over the next six weeks to show what can be repaired, what has been done in other communities, and what we can all do together. We are looking forward to fixing as many broken products in the Quinte Region as we can.