Skipton Repair Café
Our next repair café:
Saturday 28th June | 10am - 1pm
St Andrew’s Church, 27b Newmarket St, Skipton, North Yorkshire, BD23 2JE
Repairs are free. Voluntary donations are welcome.
2025 Repair Café dates:
28th June | 26th July | 30th August | 27th September | 25th October | 29th November
What is a repair café?
Repair cafés are community events where people repair household items with help from expert volunteer repairers. They’re a great way to save items with fixable faults from going to landfill and an opportunity to learn some mending skills while you’re there.
What can I bring for repair?
You can bring all sorts of things, from clothes to toys, electrical appliances to bikes, and clocks to jewellery. Anything in need of mending. You can also bring knives or secateurs to be sharpened.
We’ll have different tools available to help with the mending and will work with you to repair your item. We may not be able to fix everything, but we’ll try!
How much does a repair cost?
Repairs are free. A voluntary donation is always welcomed to cover costs of small parts, but it is not required.
Want to help?
Our Repair Cafés are run by volunteers, from people who help with the repairs to people who make cups of tea and show visitors where to go. They’re held on the last Saturday of each month and are open from 10am-1pm.
If you’d like to get involved and volunteer, please visit our Volunteer page for more information and to apply.
The history of Repair Café
Repair Café started in the Netherlands back in 2009, thanks to Martine Postma, a journalist from Amsterdam. She came up with a simple but brilliant idea: set up friendly, low-key meetups where people could fix their broken stuff with help from local experts – all in a relaxed, social setting.
The first Repair Café took place in Amsterdam in October 2009 and it was a hit. Dozens of locals and curious visitors turned up with their broken items, ready to learn and get stuck in. Volunteers brought tools and know-how, and together they brought everything from chairs to gadgets back to life. The response made it clear - people were ready for a change.
Encouraged by that success, Martine launched the Repair Café Foundation in 2011. Since then, the foundation has helped people all over the world start their own Repair Cafés. The idea? Bring repair culture back into everyday life, keep practical skills alive, and help neighbours connect in a meaningful way.
Let’s face it – we live in a throwaway culture. We buy more, use things for less time, and toss them out at the first sign of trouble. Most of us don’t even consider fixing things anymore, and many have no idea how. Meanwhile, we’re at risk of losing the knowledge of people who do have those hands-on skills.
Repair Cafés give these skilled people a platform to share their knowledge, feel valued, and help others. At the same time, they reduce waste, save resources and cut CO₂ emissions by avoiding the need for new products.
Even more importantly, they help people rethink their relationship with their belongings - learning to value and care for what they have. It’s a small shift, but one that can lead to bigger changes toward a more sustainable world. And it all starts with a broken toaster, a bit of teamwork and a cup of tea.
