We are excited to be returning to the new Marino Community Hall, where the Repair Café first started in November 2021. Since inception we have held 37 sessions and saved over 1000kg of stuff from landfill. It’s called a café rather than shop, as the volunteers give their time freely and we only ask for a donation to help supply consumables for the repairs. And like all good cafés we have barista coffee and cake.
Marino Repair Cafe returns to Marino Community Hall Sunday 20 July 2025.
Repair Cafés form a worldwide movement that strives to preserve repair skills in society and to promote more repairable products. They started in the Netherlands in 2009, and are now present in dozens of cities around the world. We belong to the Australian Repair Network and the information we collect is used to help inform the advocacy and policy work being done around the Right to Repair. We are supported by Sustainable Communities SA where there is a list of the other repair cafes in Adelaide.
Our Repair café has a core group of 14 volunteers, repairing a multitude of electrical items, general household goods, pottery, guitars, toys, bikes and sewing repairs; and more recently a knife and tool sharpening service. All our electrical repairs are performed by retired licenced electricians. The most common items we see are toasters, lamps, kettles – goods that are only guaranteed for 12 months and then fail. We have had many interesting objects turn up, including vintage hi-fi’s, a robot whose fault was easy fixed as it was mechanical and a very large inflatable Santa who we got ready in time for Xmas. One of our earlier successes was a kids fixit table, showing children how to put a few simple wooden items together; and now we are back in our permanent home this is a feature we would like to repeat. Regular updates are shared on our Facebook page.
We hold our sessions 3rd Sunday of month, with a break over summer ( Dec/Jan).
Opening times 1-4pm, with last items accepted at 3.30pm
If you are interested in volunteering please contact christeale1@gmail.com.
