Your Skipton Radio: Morgan and Joanna interview
Charity trustee Joanna and volunteer co-ordinator Morgan had a fun time being interviewed by Your Skipton Radio recently, as part of their Skipton Business Awards series. Interviewer Alex was very good at making it feel just like a nice chat.
Alex: So here we are at Your Skipton, and we are talking to…
Morgan: Morgan Spicer, volunteer co-ordinator for Share Skipton.
Alex: …and…
Joanna: Joanna Powell, trustee of Share Skipton.
Alex: All right, Morgan, so for anyone who doesn't know about Share Skipton, first of all, congrats on being nominated in two categories for the Skipton Business Awards. Tell me a bit about what you do.
Morgan: Thank you very much. So we run a library of Things, which is much like a library where you borrow books, but instead you borrow stuff. So anything that you want to use, but don't necessarily want to buy, come and see us. And we also run a Repair Café, which is where we repair your items for free.
Alex: And so in your library of Things, what are your kind of most popular borrowed items?
Morgan: Our most borrowed items are carpet cleaners, wallpaper steamers, sanders, hedge trimmers, dehumidifiers, giant garden games like Cornhole, pressure washers, which are not available to borrow at the minute because of the hosepipe ban.
Alex: Oh yeah, keeping legal with the Yorkshire Water there.
Morgan: Absolutely. And garden shredders, our fastest loan ever was a sander that went out for 22 minutes and came back again. We normally borrow for a week at a time for affordable prices.
Alex: What did you charge for 22 minutes?
Morgan: We borrowed… we charged a week for it, I can't tell.
Alex: Brilliant. So how did… who came up with the idea then? Was it yourself or you and just a group? Is there a lot of trustees involved?
Joanna: Well, Angela Monaghan is our chair and it was her idea. And she called a public meeting, encouraged as many people as possible to come to discuss the question, do we want a library of Things in Skipton? And there was a lot of interest then, and a few people signed up, including me, to drive the thing forward.
And after a lot of work and a lot of help from a lot of different people, we finally opened the library of Things on the 23rd of July last year, so a little bit over a year ago. And it's going great guns.
Alex: And I guess there are a lot of benefits, you know, for the planet and, you know, for reusing things, you know, because we are in a bit of a throwaway society. And I suppose you're fighting the tide of that really.
Morgan: That's right. We're trying to encourage people to buy less and repair what they can and share where they can as well. So you borrow a lawnmower from your neighbour, you might as well come see us or organise that between yourselves. We're trying to promote a circular economy and become a little bit more eco-friendly in Skipton.
Joanna: I just wanted to say that the average electric drill is used for 10 minutes in its lifetime.
Alex: Really?
Joanna: Yeah, you Google it, it's true. So they just sit in people's garages and do nothing for years…
Alex: So you get a bit of er, you know, a bit of enthusiasm, a bit of vim and vigour, you buy this expensive drill, use it once, it just sits there.
Joanna: Exactly.
Alex: My wife does the DIY, I can't be trusted with a drill. It doesn't sound like a Skipton accent, where abouts do you hail from, Morgan?
Morgan: So I'm from Texas originally, I lived in London for 10 years, and then ended up in Skipton and landed this great job.
Alex: Do you think there are - are more of these in the south than the North? Are you quite pioneering? Because I've heard of, I think there's a similar thing in Ilkley, but there's not that many around the North.
Morgan: That's right. I think because the North is so spread out, it's a little bit more ..widespread, then in the South in London, there's lots and lots of libraries of things.
And there are quite a few repair cafés now. And in fact, since launching our repair cafe, two repair cafés ago, we've been in touch with other collectives trying to launch their own repair cafés. So it's definitely a growing trend.
Alex: So how does it work? Do you kind of have a library online of all of your items? Can people sort of browse and decide what they need and that sort of thing?
Morgan: That's right, yes, we have all of our items available on our website, and you can see whether or not they're in stock. You can see how much it will cost to borrow, and you can see how much it costs to become a member. Standard membership fee is a tenner for a year.
Alex: And if anyone borrows something and breaks it, you can repair it.
Morgan: That's right. That is exactly the concept.
Alex: And you're up for best event, I notice, as well. So is that for a particular thing you did?
Morgan: Well, that's for the Repair Café. So we've gotten a lot of feedback from people saying that it's fantastic, it's a wonderful idea - you don't necessarily have to have something to repair to come and see the Repair Café. There's plenty of cakes and biscuits and tea and coffee as well.
Alex: So it's a bit of a social as well.
Morgan: It is, absolutely. And you can learn to repair stuff there as well. So you sit with your repairer and you go through what you're going to do together to get it fixed. So it's more of a community event than it is necessarily a drop off, get your thing fixed, although we want to promote all the repairers in Skipton as well. So we want to be sure to send people on to local repair shops where we can. And we've asked everybody who can repair in Skipton to come join in. And if they haven't, then we'll send them on out to them anyway.
Alex: So where can people go online to find out more about you guys when you're open and your events and things like that?
Morgan: Our website is shareskipton.org and we are also present on LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.
Alex: And just finally, do you think, I'll ask you both this, do you think it's quite important, you know, that all of us in Skipton kind of stick together as a community? Because it feels like there's quite a community vibe here, doesn't there? Either of you can answer that.
Joanna: Yeah, that's so much what we're about. We want to encourage people to share, to get together, to help each other, and to enjoy the whole process. So that is very much what we're about.
Alex: Yeah, I think it feels, compared to a lot of places I've lived and worked, it does feel like we've got that vibe here, doesn't it?
Morgan: Absolutely. It's a really sweet community. Having lived in lots of places, this community here in Skipton is very encouraging and everybody is very friendly, and it's lovely. “Luv‑leh”.
Alex: So when - I am buying a house at the moment, which is taking forever - but if I need to borrow anything, I'll be in touch.
Morgan: Absolutely, please. We've got paint strippers that go out all the time, they're very, very useful.
Alex: My wife will be sending me to learn to do stuff because I'm useless.
Morgan: That's it. That's perfect.
Alex: So I'll probably see one of your events soon.
Joanna: Yeah, you can't yet borrow a person to use the equipment.
Alex: I could do with that, to be honest. I'll definitely see you for cake. You had me at cake.
Morgan: Perfect. Love that.
Alex: And good luck. Well, good luck for both of your awards. But just to be nominated must be a nice feeling.
Morgan: Absolutely. It's a real honour to be nominated, especially to be up with such amazing competition, as it were. We don't really want to compete with any of the other events or any of the other nominees. But it's an honour for sure.
Alex: They say every day is a school day. That sat, about the 10 minutes, that's going to stay with me, that: 10 minutes for the average drill?!
Joanna: It's a very powerful little piece of information, but it's true.
Alex: It's just slightly shorter than I used my gym membership for a year, which- which expired recently. Thank you both.
Morgan: Thank you so much.
External references and further reading listening
Skipton Business Awards 2025 nominee - Share Skipton interview (yourskipton.com)
