Repair & Advice Cafe

The St Andrews Repair & Advice Café launched in January 2024 with funding from the University of St Andrews’ Community Fund. It takes place on the 2nd/3rd Wednesday of the month and is part of the International Repair Cafe Movement. Every month we have a team of volunteer repairers helping to repair electrical items, clothes and bags and sometimes we have volunteers helping repair ceramics, watches, clocks, musical instruments, and jewellery. This varies from one month to the next depending on their availability.

For anything electrical it is important to email us beforehand, to tell us what you would like to get fixed and we can let you know if it is likely to be fixable. You are still very welcome to come along with an electrical item, but there may not be time to get to your item if you haven’t been in touch beforehand. If you have a musical instrument that needs to be fixed then please get in touch as our volunteer repairer is happy to receive email enquiries outwith the Cafe sessions.

In addition, we run an advisory service (which varies from one month to the next) alongside the repairs to diagnose faults with items, raise awareness about what is and isn’t fixable and how to look after what we own in order to minimize the risk of items breaking and falling apart. So far this has included IT devices, shoe and bag repairs, and clocks and watches. We are also looking to offer advice in other areas of sustainability, be that energy efficiency in our homes, how to run a small business sustainably, sustainable period products, heat pumps or anything else. This also varies from one month to the next.

There will be refreshments, books/magazines to browse and lots of lovely people to chat to. Each month the Cafe rotates locations so it’s a chance to peek inside places you may not have been into before, and learn more about how great your local town is – previous cafes have been in the North East Fife Community Hub, Cafe Zest, David Russell Apartments, the Eco Hub Refill Shop and the Scottish Oceans Institute. Register on this page to receive an email reminder about what the repair cafe will offer each month.

Please note, Dairsie’s Repair Cafe meets on the last Wednesday of each month. So you can go to theirs and come to ours.

PREVIOUS CAFES

Our January Cafe hosted a Heat Pumps advisor and repairers who specialise in ceramics and bikes, our February Cafe had a musical instrument repairer and advice on energy efficiency was on hand and our March Cafe welcomed the University’s PC Clinic who gave advice on device optimization and security and took donations for the charity reusingIT. At subsequent Cafes we hosted a discussion on running a socially-responsible and sustainable cafe, had an advisor on hand talking about eco homes and a Madras College Food Tech teacher doing a cooking demonstration for low-energy, sustainable, healthy meals. We have also hosted a Student Union representative giving out free sustainable period products. If you have any ideas for future Cafes please get in touch, or if you can offer a skill/ advice on a topic related to sustainability, we would love to hear from you.

Future Cafes:

13th Nov
11th Dec