On 14 May 2024 a great new ZORA project starts: the Repair Café!
From 14 May you can come every Tuesday and Wednesday between 12 noon and 4 pm to repair broken everyday objects together with others — or to learn how. We provide space, professional tools, expertise and coffee.
With this non-commercial, voluntary offer we want to help conserve resources, avoid waste and protect the environment. The capitalist mode of production is designed to keep producing things that break quickly (by design), so that consumers buy replacements. Yet in most cases a repair is possible and sensible. With the Repair Café we undermine corporate obsolescence strategies and extend the useful life of everyday goods. And of course it saves money, because for far too many people there is still a lot of month left at the end of the money.
The Repair Café is explicitly not a “free repair service” but a collective project of organised help towards self-help. It strengthens neighbourly assistance, solidarity between people and dialogue between generations. Everyone is invited to pass on their knowledge and expertise in repairing things to other generations. DIY is not only sensible, it is political.
So do come by on a Tuesday, bring your things and let us see what can still be done with them. That can be broken household objects, computers, devices, audio and video equipment and the like. If you have questions, give us a call or send us a message. We look forward to many visitors.
And last but not least: thank you to our two federal volunteers Tim and Mike, who prepared all this.