We practice what we teach and ran the Community Repair Corner at WOMAD 2026, with the support of volunteers from Bath Share & Repair. The stall had a wonderful buzz, with supportive visitors and many fellow community repairers dropping in to say hi. We looked at over 170 items and had many many more conversations about the importance of repair in the community, for our society and for our planet.
Of the 171 items that our team of volunteers looked at over 3.5 days, we were able to fix 154 of them on the spot – that’s a repair rate of 90%. There were only 5 that we had to give up on. The clear winner in terms of item category was clothing or textiles, followed by glasses, shoes and camping chairs. The “other” category contains a few wheelchairs, buggies and mobility scooters that we fixed too, as well as a sporran and a saxaflute. Not quite the clocks, radios or toasters of a usual Repair Café!
We also asked our visitors about Repair Cafés: awareness of them climbs steadily with age. It makes festivals such a great opportunity to introduce repair culture to a younger, first-time audience who wouldn’t otherwise walk into a community repair event. Our visitors came from all over the UK (with the odd visitor from Ireland, the Netherlands, France and Italy!).
It was a fantastic experience, both for the volunteers as well as the festival visitors – some described the Community Repair Corner as an essential part of any festival. On to the next one!
