What is a Repair Café?
[New for 2026 – book in advance]
The Golden Valley Repair Café is a part of the world wide movement of Repair Cafés. This started with the very first Repair Café opened in Amsterdam in 2009 by Martine Postma. It was a great success which prompted Martine to start the Repair Café International Foundation. Since 2011 this non-profit organisation has provided professional support to local groups initially in the Netherlands and, latterly, many other countries. Now in 2025 there are over 3,700 Repair Cafés operating throughout the world.
Repair Cafés are free meeting places and they’re all about repairing things (together). In the place where a Repair Café is located, you’ll find expert volunteers, with repair skills in all kinds of fields. You may also find help to make any repairs you may wish to do yourself. On clothes, furniture, electrical appliances, bicycles, crockery, appliances, toys, et cetera.
Visitors bring their broken items from home. Together with the specialists they start making their repairs in the Repair Café. It’s an ongoing learning process. If you have nothing to repair, you can enjoy a cup of tea or coffee. Or you can lend a hand with someone else’s repair job. You can also get inspired at the reading table – by leafing through books on repairs and DIY.
In the UK we throw away vast amounts of stuff. Even things with almost nothing wrong, which could get a new lease on life with a simple repair. The trouble is, lots of people have forgotten that they can repair things themselves. Many younger people no longer know how to do that. Knowing how to make repairs is a skill quickly lost. This is a threat to a sustainable future and to the circular economy, in which raw materials can be reused again and again.
That’s why there’s a Repair Café!
Practical skills are passed on. Things are being used for longer and don’t have to be thrown away. This reduces the volume of raw materials and energy needed to make new products. It cuts CO2 emissions because manufacturing new products and recycling old ones causes CO2 to be released.
The Golden Valley Repair Café is slightly unusual in that to provide an accessible service to the population of the Golden Valley we run quarterly Repair Cafés between 10.00am and 12.30pm, normally on the first Saturday of each month, in three different locations:
KINGSTONE, where we meet in St Michael and All Angels church in January, April, July and October.
EWYAS HAROLD, where we meet in St Michael’s Church Hall in February, May, August and November.
DORSTONE, where the meetings are in the Village Hall in March, June, September and December.
You will find a range of repairers at each of these centres, able to repair a wide range of items from small electrical items to furniture you are able to bring to the venue, dolls and other toys, jewellery, garden tools and our team of sewing ladies can do wonders with mending holes in all sorts of clothing (including that of dolls). But, please note we do not undertake alterations to new clothing. We are also able to undertake repairs on bicycles and to sharpen all manner of knives and tools.
If you want to learn how to do these repairs yourself our repairers will do their very best to show you how you go about that. If you would rather let them repair your items you can partake in a tea, coffee and a piece of cake all provided by our volunteers.
There is no charge for any of this, but we do ask that if you are happy with what we have done for you that you make a donation to enable us to pay rent for our venues, refund expenses that our repairers have incurred and buy tools and consumables that are used during each session.
Dates for the next year
All meetings are Saturdays from 10am to 12.30pm.
Starting in January 2026 you will be able to book a time-slot in advance at the next repair café in each location. When booking is open a BOOK link will appear against the date and you can book an item in for a specific time. Booking is not essential but it will help us to know what jobs to expect and we will try and carry out the repair at or soon after the time requested.
Golden Valley Repair Café has recently become a founding member of ARCHES the Association of Repair Cafés in Herefordshire. The association has all current seven Herefordshire-based Repair Cafés as members. These are:
| Ledbury Repair Café | First Saturday of the month in the morning |
| Leominster Repair Café | First Saturday of the month in the morning |
| Golden Valley Repair Café | First Saturday of the month in the morning |
| Marden Repair Café | First Saturday of the month in the morning |
| Archenfield Repair Café | Second Saturday of the month in the afternoon |
| South Hereford Repair Café | Third Saturday of the month in the morning |
| Hereford City Repair Café | Fourth Saturday of the month in the morning |