Trumpington Repair Café

Hopefully most readers of the Trumpet have already heard of Repair Cafes and many will have been to one.

The Trumpington Repair Cafe started when a few local residents met at an online training course provided by Cambridge Carbon Footprint. This course, commissioned by the County Council, encouraged us to try setting one up in our village as it gave us access to a pool of experienced repairers and we soon found some enthusiastic local helpers through social media.

We applied for a City Council grant to cover renting a venue, and held our first event in April 2023. Since then, we have gone from strength to strength and on 18 January we celebrated holding our 10th Repair Cafe.

This time our volunteers mended lots of lamps, trouser pockets, a Nintendo Switch, a suitcase, a sewing machine, a hedge trimmer, a bike light, sunglasses, a necklace, two dehumidifiers, and a small shredder.

We have established a “home” at Trumpington Meadows Primary School where the facilities have proved ideal, and probably contribute to the fact that the Trumpington Repair Cafe is a favourite with repairers and customers alike.

We are now financially self-supporting, thanks to generous donations from delighted customers, but we could not continue without the technical support of Cambridge Carbon Footprint.

The next Repair Cafe will be on Sunday 17 May, 2-5pm. Online bookings are now open here: Linktr.ee/trurepcaf

If you are new to Repair Cafes, you can read more about how they work here: cambridgecarbonfootprint.org/repair-cafes