Future Repair Events?

Tags: #<Tag:0x00007fa49a97e668>
#1

Hello everyone.

Firstly: thanks to everyone for a great event. It was a lot of fun.

As @Dorine said, repairing on Saturday was a great success.

We fixed 7 bikes (thanks @EdwardE!) and a couple of electrical/electronic things (thanks to my friend Aaron who turned up with some friends and a cute dog) and we gave out some repair advice to a few more people.

So… do we think it would be nice to run regular repair café events open to the general public?
This would, of course, also be a good opportunity for members to get their stuff fixed and also to fix anything in the Space that needs fixing.

I was thinking of something like a monthly 3 hour event, say 1-4pm, on the 2nd Saturday of every month.
(I’m not fixated on that time btw, it just seems to work well for other repair cafés).
The reason for having it on the 2nd Saturday of the month (or could be the 3rd Saturday) is that Lambeth Repair Café have their events on the 1st Saturday of the month and Repair Café Nunhead have theirs on the last Saturday of the month.

We could do electrical/electronic repairs and also bicycles. Maybe clothing & fabric repairs too if we get enough interest?

Firstly: do we think this is a good idea? Please vote:

  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

And, please follow up or DM me with any suggestions/comments/thoughts.

Thank you! :pray:

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Creating a Repair Cafe?
#2

P.S. I’ve deliberately made the poll anonymous so I don’t know who is for and who is against the idea, but I’d be interested to hear your reasons either way.

Again, please feel free to DM me if you don’t want to discuss it publicly.

#3

I just don’t see the point when there are external repair cafés, some of which are friends of the SLMS, feels like overstepping boundaries on them

#4

Until a few weeks ago I dint know @DaveLukes, I was introduced to him via another discourse with a pined post from the people who make it possible for the network to work together restarters.net the London group has about 500 members. They are all aware there is the potential to start a regular cafe here and are watching this space. I was also a couple weeks ago invited to go see the Nunehead repair cafe event and they was so supportive and keen on the idea that we would also join them in their efforts to the “right to repair”.

When Dave put his hand up to come play with us at SLMS, I double checked with the restarter HQ and was given the green light to invite him as a Wrangler for the festival for Repairs with a view to seeing if he could start and run a regular event here repairing stuff.

This is not the first time we had a repair cafe at SLMS just it went dormant. When Dave looked at registering us on the network we already had over 60 followers and it was all setup for us.

(https://restarters.net/group/view/92)

#5

Sorry Dorine, I don’t seem to understand your point.

#6

They was more than happy we wanted to create one and helped a lot at their end to facilitate finding Dave.
I also dint want us to be seen as overstepping our boundaries’ so I went and talked to Nunehead to make sure, us thinking of doing a repair café was going to be ok within that community.

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#7

I’d be very up for helping out with future repairing events, @Biketechs (not an actual group it seems), it would be great if we could get something set up in future for easy donations to the space? Several people asked me if they owed me anything and it would have been great to be easily able to show them a QR code/card reader for a £2 donation or something.

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#8

We do have a link…

https://southlondonmakerspace.org/product-category/donation/

edit… I added some options…

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#9

Hi @emuboy ,
It’s definitely not overstepping boundaries, very much the opposite: we’re helping our friends out!

I volunteer with the repair cafés at Nunhead and Brixton; they’re both really busy and, as @Dorine said, they will be happy to have another repair cafe because it will take some of the load off them.

Also, the nearest repair café to Herne Hill is in Brixton which is a couple of miles North and there isn’t another one further South until you get to Thornton Heath, so SLMS is a good place to have one and it’s already got everything we need to run a repair café :slight_smile:

#10

Thanks @asander1.

If/when we get the repair café going, I’ll ask you to add a £20 option because grateful people at repair cafés have been known to be generous when their favourite gramophone/blender/radio/… gets fixed.

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#11

I’ve added a 20 quid product as well

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#12

Id like to say that I work for Fixing Factory and have expertise to set this up. That said I am split on this topic and believe we should think this through positives and negatives - we are not a free venue and we should be very mindful here as we can just have a repair group as part of electronics night that is just called electronics night and not being hijacked by a big org. We are a maker community and people do actively join to repair their items as part of it.
We pay membership to be able to use the space. If we get to be known to repair items for free, we will be bugged constantly by people walking in and it could get messy. Brixton is very close!

So - personally I’d like to see a workshop for members, not a free service.

#14

Balham and Tooting have regular fixing events, @Dermot has been running them with restarters for a long time afaik too, worthwhile giving those a go too in the South

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#15

Hi @petra, thanks, but, I don’t understand your objections.

You say “we are not a free venue for organisations to run events they actively get money for”?
The “organisation” running these events would will be SLMS and the only “money” would be donations which would go directly to SLMS.

And I don’t understand “hijacked by a big org”?
What “big org”? SLMS will be running these events with the help of a few volunteers.

Regarding your other points …
Repair cafés don’t “repair items for free”: they help people to repair their items, which is an important distinction.
The events will be at specific times on specific dates so I don’t see how people are going to walk in at other times when the door is locked.
We have regular open evenings where we show people around the space but that doesn’t mean that we get people bugging us all the time to be shown around.

Maybe you’re thinking this will be like a Fixing Factory? It’s nothing like that.

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#16

Wonderful. I am all in then. How would we call this, a repair cafe, SLMS community repair or …?

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#17

I’m sure myself and probably other 3D techs would be willing to help out if there were ever any themed days. I know there are hundreds of not quite working 3D printers out there.

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#18

I can offer chair spindle and woodwork repairs (also I can bring PAT tester for electronic repair and do all those kettles, toasters etc.)

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#19

I’ve run bicycle repair clinics and pop-ups. Most people who know me can attest that I love helping people with their bikes; however, I’d like to know, from an ethics standpoint, how you’d gauge and manage the impact on the two bike shops nearby.

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#20

We are talking about 1 day a month…

This probably will have an impact on bike shops but it will also have an impact on those people who cant afford a bike repair - one thing that struct me at the Numhead cafe was just how in need some of the people waiting are and how the cost of living crisis meant it was worth waiting for a £15 toaster to be repaired.

#21

There’s Dr Bikes 2x a month 15 mins away if someone wants their bike fixed for free.

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