Our Repair Café Team has had another busy year as well as increasing both our membership and the services we offer. We visited Upper Tean, Butterton and Brown Edge in addition to our usual visits to Foxlowe Arts Centre and Haregate Community Centre in Leek.
Thanks to funding from the North Staffordshire Community Fund, we were able to provide electrical safety training to our team and also invited members from Biddulph Repair Café to join us at a specialist training centre in Stoke.
We were delighted to learn that our Repair Cafe had been successful in applying for funding from the North Staffordshire Environment fund, managed by the Community Foundation for Staffordshire & Shropshire, to help us provide hands-on electrical safety training to our Repair Cafe team.
Our electrical repair team have previously undertaken individual Portable Appliance Testing training online, but the team wanted to get some more detailed training from a recognised electrical training provider, so that they were all working to a common standard and had practical experience of potential hazard we might find in the items brought into our Repair Cafes.
Thanks to this funding, we are now able to book training with local provider Rebus Training, based in Tunstall.
We are looking to work with our colleagues Social Connective CIC based in Biddulph, and MCA will sponsor a free place for a local young person looking to pursue a career in electrical work.
Link to grant details - https://staffordshire.foundation/grants/staffordshire-organisations/north-staffordshire-environment-fund/
My journey to becoming a Repair Café Volunteer started with an accidental conversation and I haven’t regretted a bit of it since. The Repair Café has given me what I was looking for – the opportunity to volunteer with a local organisation, meet new people and give something back to the community. Whilst attending an event at the Foxlowe, I got chatting to a lady sat next to me about an advertisement in the programme for the Leek Repair Cafe. By coincidence, she also volunteered there, and she explained what they do. It sounded just up my street; I attended the first Repair Cafe and fell in love with the idea that I could use my electronic and electrical repair skills again. So much so, that I also began volunteering with Biddulph Repair Cafe as well.
I specialise in electrical and electronic equipment repair, typically handling items such as domestic small white goods, hi-fi equipment, garden tools, domestic lighting and all manner of things in between. I particularly enjoy repairing vintage hi-fi equipment. I guess I’ve got form on this. From a very early age, I was fascinated by the way the world worked and would be constantly taking electrical and electronic items apart to examine them. I would read the Radio Spares electronics catalogues at bedtime when most other children were reading the Famous Five books. I studied electrical engineering and electronics at the University of Liverpool, moved into mobile phone manufacturing, then IT infrastructure and now IT architecture design.
Visualising the world and how machines work – and using that image to problem-solve is intensely satisfying. Unfortunately, many manufacturers now make it very difficult to repair their items, so some that come in to us are always going to be a challenge; either because service manuals are not available or the equipment relies on understanding the software that runs it. Printers, for example, are generally very challenging. However, many of the repairs I carry out are actually quite straightforward, such as replacing a fuse, a flexible cable, fitting a new plug, or re-soldering a broken wire. Without these simple fixes the item would be destined for the scrapheap, but for many manufacturers, it's often uneconomical for them to do the repair themselves; the repair cafés fill that gap and quickly breathe new life into many items.
The team at Moorlands Repair Cafe have been busy this year, with monthly visits to towns and villages across the Moorlands. We are keen to spread the word and encourage residents to have access to our services.
- February (Haregate) - 29 items
- March (Foxlowe) -39 items
- April (Haregate) - 15 items
- May (Upper Tean) -10 items
- June (Foxlowe) -23 items
- July (Butterton) - 37 items
As you can see from the statistics below, we fix two-thirds of items on the day, with another 13% needing a replacement part. Just one in five is beyond repair.
We do see a lot of vacuum cleaners! Last year we seemed inundated with food mixers, but none so far this year.
Our repair team love a challenge and our last session at Butterton was very busy with a wide range of items from Kindles, to lawmowers, trousers and camera cases.
The team enjoyed the fine weather and beautiful setting of the Village Hall to have our annual BBQ with the amazing Bill the BBQ providing the necessary cooking facilities.
Our Repair Café team have been busy this year again and are looking forward to visiting new locations in the Moorlands this summer as we look to widen our reach to cover the entire Moorlands, working with our partners at Social Connective CIC in Biddulph. We are always looking for new volunteers to join us as repairers, part of the reception team or to help with publicity.
Upcoming events
- 21 June at Foxlowe Arts Centre, Leek
- 12 July at Village Hall, Butterton
- 23 August at Sandy Lane Centre, Brown Edge
- 27 September at Foxlowe Arts Centre, Leek
- 18 October at Haregate Community Centre, Leek
- 15 November at Foxlowe Arts Centre, Leek
We are also excited to be part of the Chain Reaction project which is a joint scheme to promote access to cycling in the Moorlands. Working with a range of partners, our Repair Café team helped get 30 bikes checked over, repaired and handed over to the good people of Biddulph. It was all part of a fun day in April that saw Outside bring in the amazing Bicycle Ballet to the town, putting a smile on everyone’s face. You can watch highlights of the event here.
We are now looking to save more bikes from the scrap heap, and support schemes in Cheadle & Biddulph to give people the skills and confidence to take up cycling.
We were very pleased to be invited to join selected Repair Cafes from around the country in an event being held in the House of Lords next month. One of our repairers, John, will be meeting MPs and representatives from Restart to showcase the great week that local groups like Moorlands Repair Café do in our communities. We have written to our two MPS and urged them to attend – you can ask them too here.
Be among the happy users at our regular Repair Cafes. We have confirmed dates and venues for Repair Cafes up to May 2025, with more in planning. This year, we will make our first visit to Upper Tean and we are also hoping to get over to Butterton and Brown Edge, in addition to our regular attendance at Haregate Community Centre and Foxlowe Arts Centre.
We will also have the very popular 'Rescue Me' stall with us at the Foxlowe in March.
- 15 February - Haregate Community Centre, Leek
- 22 March - Foxlowe Arts Centre, Leek
- 26 April - Haregate Community Centre
- 17 May - Great Wood Community Hall, Upper Tean
Doors open at 10.00am and we ask that people bring in items before 1.30pm so we can look to finish by 2.00pm. Everyone welcome to stop by and see what we do. New volunteers are always welcome.