What is Repair Cafe?

Repair Cafes happen all over the world. They are part of a global green movement to encourage people to repair their broken things - rather than chuck them away and buy something new. You can find out more about the movement here.

We know that many people in Sheffield would like to repair, but don’t know how to. We set up our Repair Cafe in 2022 to offer another place in Sheffield where people can come for help and advice on repairing their broken items.

If you’d like to volunteer to help us run the Monthly Cafes, as a repairer or as an admin person, we’d love to hear from you - please get in touch

How does it work?

One Sunday afternoon a month you can bring along your broken item along to get some help in fixing it - all for free! We have a small team of volunteer fixers here eager to help you.

When you come, we will add your name to our list of items and repairers will look at them in the order that the people arrive. NB: This means you may have to allow time to wait until the repairer can get to looking at your item.

It’s free!

We want to encourage as many people as possible to repair and everyone is welcome to come and ask for our help. All the volunteers give their time for free - but if you are able to give a £ donation it really helps us. There are some substantial cash costs we incur (for example, annual insurance of £300) so your donations really help us find the £ to keep running.

Can you fix ….?

Things we commonly fix include household electrical items, knives that need sharpening, straightforward sewing repairs, wooden items. We can’t fix everything though! To save you the trouble of a wasted trip, we have some tips for simple things to check before you decide to come. And remember to bring batteries/a light bulb/the plug if relevant so you can check if the repair has worked!

New Venue for 2026 (S2 4SJ)

In 2026 our Repair Cafe is planned for the 3rd Sunday of each month, starting on February 15th, 2 til 4.30 pm at The Sheffield Hackspace at Portland Works, just round the corner from Harland Works in Randall Street S2 4SJ. This is a new venue for us and is the result of an exciting new partnership. The Hackspace is a great venue for repairs as it is very well equipped with lots of tools. The only slight downside is that it is accessed via some steep wooden stairs so you need to be able to navigate those. It doesn’t have a cafe - although we are happy to offer cups of tea as you wait, and there are also cafes locally we can suggest. It is round the corner from Harland Works. On street parking is free on Sundays

2026 Dates

Sunday 2 to 4.30 pm on the 3rd Sunday of the month from February - November 2026 (not August or December).

• Sunday 15th February

• Sunday 15th March

• Sunday 19th April

• Sunday 17th May

• Sunday 21st June

• Sunday 19th July

• no cafe in August

• Sunday 20th September

• Sunday 18th October

• Sunday 15th November

Some background on The Story of our Repair Cafe

It started in September 2022 when we held our first, trial repair cafe. Staffed by amazing volunteers we offered skills in fixing household electrical items (think toasters, coffee makers, hoovers, printers…), laptops, phones, bicycles, things needing stitching and wooden items.

We loved doing it and quite a few things got successfully repaired (see the blog about our first cafe ). Since then we have hosted a monthly Repair Cafe - and we’d love to encourage you to bring your broken things along, and get some help figuring out if they can be repaired, and if so, whether you can fix it, rather than bin it! Good for the planet and good for your budget :)

To get a flavour of the repair cafe, you could check out our blog posts on them below. We've also had some interest in the media about our repair cafe - see "The Curious Return of Make Do and Mend" in the Tribute and "Radios, bikes and Ice-Cream Makers - Sheffielders save a fortune at repair shop events" in the Star!

Our fixers are all volunteers and offer skills to fix a range of things, so we can usually help you with any of the following at most cafes.

• electrical household items

• sewing repairs

• knife sharpening

• bike repairs

• laptop and mobile phone repairs

• wooden items repairs

So far we’ve successfully carried out about 60 repairs (see our blog post here for a full list to be inspired!) … and we are looking forward to doing many more at our next Repair Cafes.

If you would like to check what fixers are coming, you can contact us the week before - we should know then which volunteers are coming and what skills we’ll have on offer - call 07967 144230 or email info@harlandworks.co.uk.

Blog posts & write ups

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