What is a Repair Café?? 

 What do you do with a chair when the leg has come loose? A lamp that no longer works? A toaster that no longer toasts? A holey jumper? Ditch it? No, fix it! We help organise and support weekend sessions of fixing and skill-sharing in Haringey Community Centres and high streets.

Haringey Fixers have been helping local people get help to fix their household stuff by matching them with our team of volunteer repairers since April 2022. Read about the history of the Highgate Repair Café here.

Currently three weekends a month around lunch time in our current venues with more to come across Haringey.

Visitors book a free half-hour slot so as to bring in any ordinary household item that a normal person could carry in. So no Fridge Freezers please.

Our repairers may be experienced fixers but are often simply local people who are prepared to use their common sense to ‘troubleshoot’ problems. They know when to call in a more experienced fixer. Lots of people have got the common sense that’s all that’s needed to help repair most broken things.

Repair Cafés are community events where local people get together to fix collaboratively and often learn new skills in the process.

We hope that fixing brings about a shift in consumerism so we throw less away. We skill-share and build community. If you bring something that needs fixing, we can help bring it back to life instead of keeping it unused in a drawer or throwing it away.

Around two-thirds of what is brought in gets fixed – see everything brought into Repair Cafés across Haringey

You'll find dates for all our events here. Please book a free slot at our next Repair Café.

 Here's an extract from the living document we maintain to help standardise how we do things

History

 In Winter 2025 Haringey Fixers (Chris Setz) had initial conversations about a Highgate Repair Café with a member of the Highgate Society (Don Grubin) who had come to Muswell Hill Repair Café get help repairing some items during 2025

The Chair of the Highgate Society, Andrew Sulston subsequently visited the Muswell Hill Repair Café and asked for our help creating a Highgate Repair Café.

One of the leading members of the Highgate Society Sustainability Cttee, Cornelie Usborne, stepped forward as someone who had run a Repair Café before (in East Sussex https://sites.google.com/view/heathfieldrepaircafe/home) and visited November’s Muswell Hill Repair Café.

Cornelie has recruited another Highgate Society member, Tim Ades to be on the steering group.

She visited a number of potential Repair Café venues in Highgate, some suggested by Andrew, and recommended St Michael's Church. 

Cornelie has recruited “7 enthusiastic volunteers (all Highgate friends) plus two for working behind the scenes and baking cakes.”