Stratford-upon-Avon Repair Café

Once a month at Stratford Methodist Church, volunteers repair things for free between 10am and 2pm.

In the Summer of 2022, both Net Zero Stratford and Stratford Town Trust independently decided the town would benefit from a Repair Café.

Luckily, we didn't set up two competing cafés!

The Trust's goal is to “Create a vibrant and connected community for the people of Stratford". Net Zero Stratford is a not-for-profit project to create spaces for climate awareness and action in Stratford-upon-Avon.

A Repair Café supports both goals by:

• Bringing the community together to repair our possessions.
• Preventing the CO2 emissions caused by throwing away and buying new.
• Helping residents during the cost-of-living crisis.
• Keeping things out of landfill.

As the name suggests it's a café as well, with tea, coffee and cakes for you to enjoy, making it a social event too.

Repairs are FREE though donations are always welcome, to help us cover our costs.

Our History

We appealed in 2022 for volunteers to help us – doing the repairs, admin, serving refreshments and greeting visitors. The response was great, and the vast majority of the people who signed up are still with us.

We ran two test events with an invited audience, and our first public event was in October 2022. Unfortunately we were forced to change locations but were delighted when the Methodist Church was able to accommodate us beginning in June 2023.

Our first twelve events achieved some great results:

• 735 successful repairs (79% of the items brought in)
• An estimated 2.9 tonnes saved from landfill
• Roughly 20 tonnes of CO2 saved by not manufacturing new replacements

That's the equivalent of about 38,000 miles of driving in an average car!

Want something repaired?

Typically we can repair:

• Clothing and other things that need sewing
• Bikes
• Electrical items
• Computers and other IT hardware and software
• Things that need gluing and screwing
• Sharpening for garden tools, knives, scissors, etc.

We also feature a Give and Take stall, where you can bring things to swap. There's a different theme each month which we publicise, along with the specific items we can accommodate at the subsequent Repair Café.

We are at the Methodist Church (Opposite Holy Trinity) usually on the first Saturday of each month. The exceptions can be January and February.

We're open between 10am and 2pm, and generally it's only one item per person. Since repairs take time, please don't arrive after 1pm. It can be busy in the first hour or so but we're less busy between noon and 1pm.

The Repair Café will tackle things which need repair, but NOT alterations or up-cycling projects. There are certain items we won't accept:

• Microwaves
• Weapons
• Anything requiring welding

We perform our own Portable Appliance Testing before and after electrical repairs are made but can't offer PAT testing as a service if you're not bringing the item for repair. This is for legal reasons.

Please don't bring unwanted items you think may be useful as spares, etc. – we can't accept these!

Volunteering

If you'd like to help us please get in touch. You don't have to have a particular repairing skill, as there are other roles. However, if you can repair jewellery or small items of furniture we'd like to hear from you as we don't cover those repairs at the time of writing.

Contact us at communityhub@stratfordtowntrust.co.uk