St Andrews Repair & Advice Cafe

For our May Cafe we are thrilled to be welcomed by Lisa at the Zest Cafe on South Street. Lisa will be hosting a talk on the 4Ps: We all know People, Profit, Planet….what are they without Purpose?

This is an informal discussion on the Quadruple bottom line. We have all heard of the Triple Bottom Line (People, Planet, Profit) representing the 3 pillars of sustainability (Social, Environmental, Economic) but more organisations large & small are moving towards including “Purpose.” What does this mean? How does it improve both the business and the community? How do you integrate this into your organisation? Lisa will be joined by the owner of Fife Acres Cafe.

The talk and Q&A session will take place from 7 pm to 8 pm at the back of Zest. As seating is limited, it is essential to book your place in advance.

Our May Cafe will offer free electrical repairs (please pre-book ideally before May 10th by emailing us with some details), as well as free sewing, ceramic and musical instrument repairs. We will also have a volunteer offering advice on watches and clocks.

For anything electrical, if you haven’t pre-booked you are still very welcome to come along with an electrical item, but there may not be time to see 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.

BACKGROUND

The St Andrews Repair & Advice Cafe launched in January 2024. Part of the international Repair Cafe movement, and with funding from the University of St Andrews’ Community Fund, the monthly Repair & Advice Cafe happens mid-month (on the 2nd/3rd Wednesday of the month), offering free repairs for a range of items (which varies from one month to the next) including electricals, clothes, ceramics, musical instruments and more. In the spirit of sharing skills, the team of volunteers will be able to talk you through what they are doing and in some cases, give guidance on how you can fix items yourself.

In addition, we have decided to 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 watches. We are also looking to offer advice in other areas of sustainability, be that energy efficiency in our homes, 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 David Russell Apartments, the Eco Hub Refill Shop ,the Scottish Oceans Institute and at the North East Fife Community Hub in the St David’s Centre. 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. We also had a Student Union representative giving out free sustainable period products. In April we welcomed the Madras High School Home Economics (cooking) team, who shared their top tips for low-cost, healthy, easy cooking, including a demonstration of how to make a soup, a griddle scone and a quick steamed microwave pudding in a mug, all of which can be made without having to fire up the oven. Recipe ideas were given out for people to take home with them. We also had Cosy Kingdom on site offering free energy-saving tips for people’s homes.

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:

12th June
14th August
11th Sept
16th Oct
13th Nov
11th Dec