Salisbury Repair Cafe is celebrating five years of service

Once a month, volunteers come together to salvage well loved and damaged objects brought in my the community. The repair café is based in two rooms at Bemerton Methodist Church, one room for fixers to work and the other for admin and the café set up.

The Repair Café was set up in 2019 by Jimmy Walker and Benji Goehl, proving to be a popular and well thought of service from day one.

Volunteer Kathy Cininas said: "Our first day was so busy that was had queues outside the door. We had to give people raffle tickets - it was absolutely amazing."

Salisbury Repair Cafe runs on the first Saturday of every month (Image: Salisbury Repair Cafe)

The café stopped for a little over a year in 2020 due to the pandemic, returning the following July.

Mayor of Salisbury councillor Sven Hocking said: ""Congratulations to the Salisbury Repair Cafe on their 5th Anniversary.  This is a fantastic project which has demonstrated what can be done with a little bit of money and a ton of dedication, effort and perseverance from a group of incredibly hard working people. 

"My grateful thanks to the likes of Dr Jimmy Walker and his team who were instrumental in getting the Cafe off the ground and not least to the small army of volunteer sewers, solderers, IT gurus, handypeople, fixer uppers and everyone else who bring their skills, knowledge and expertise to breathe life into old stuff and fix the unfixable."

Many volunteers are retired engineers or seamstresses, with more than 50 people involved helping with admin and fixing. Each session sees around 30 volunteers assisting hopeful customers. 

Items are fixed for free, although donations can be made to support the costs of running the repair café if desired. Any profits go to charity.

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Anyone who needs something repairing can take the item to the repair café, where it will be assessed and taken on by the team of repairers.

Items can range between clothes, electronics, wooden toys, books, crockery, tools and ornaments, but anything can be brought in to see if it can be solved by the team.

The team tackle all kinds of repair jobs (Image: Salisbury Repair Cafe)

Among some of the most memorable fixes, Kathy recalls the team repairing Charlie, Pizza Venti's mascot who had been smashed, and more recently, a Barbie car.

Kathy said: "We have very much an older clientele, the generation who can mend and make do, and people are just really glad not to put stuff into landfill."

However, Salisbury Repair Café is always looking for volunteers of any age who would like to help with fixing or admin, as well as younger members of the community who would like to bring an item in for repair.

Kathy said: "We're a like minded group, lots of us volunteer for other things as well. It's a good group and we all meet for lunch afterwards."

The next repair cafes are on November 9 and December 14. For more information, visit the website here.