A few people have been quietly collecting tools over the last few months with a view to making Arran’s first Repair Café.
The main ideas behind the Arran Repair Café are to keep items in use longer through repair, reducing waste, upcycling items (reusing items for a different purpose), lending equipment, preventing excess produce as well as the social and learning aspects of these types of activities.
We spoke to Michael Gettins of Lamlash, one of the main people behind the idea who said:
“Arran Repair Cafe has come out of an initial idea to use my barns as a Men’s/She Shed but in doing further research the reality is that two buses and a hike to get to it for some folk would prevent some people from being able to access it!
So the idea has developed into a more mobile or fluid facility possibly using halls and centre spaces in each village on a rotational basis with different themes or activities as it moves round.
To date myself and a couple of other folk have been gathering tools for the tool library aspect and other folk have offered to do demonstrations etc.. as part of the learning aspect, with the last part being to bring some folk together to tackle a ‘Mob Job’ (a small scale DIY SOS) which might be a small job for someone coming home from hospital needing a garden tidy, a path cleared or little pieces of work to make it safe to come home to!
A couple of us have been doing ‘wee jobs’ to help local folk or businesses with fixing problems or finding new solutions to problems and making some bespoke pieces which is all helping to raise the profile and fund some pieces of PPE to ensure safe working…”
The group are now planning a meeting to see how the project can be taken forward and they are working alongside Eco Savvy, ArCas, NAC and other partners yet to be identified.
“Soon we hope to form a steering group that will help formalise how we set it up and how we reduce, reuse and recycle more whilst being creative, supportive and inclusive too! Let us know if you’re interested in helping to set it up, share skills, donate or form alliances or partnerships?”
Please contact Michael if you would like to get involved, on michaelgettins@aol.com
For more details see the group Facebook page
