South Down Repair Cafe on the way to Hilltown

​Taking place in the INF Hall on the Rostrevor Road from 10am until 1pm, this is the first time the Repair Cafe is taking place in the Hilltown area.

Started by a group of community and environmental activists in Castlewellan back in 2020, South Down Repair Cafe is part of a growing movement of repair cafe’s both here in Northern Ireland and across the globe. Since 2020 South Down Repair Cafe volunteers have hosted events in Castlewellan, Newcastle and Downpatrick and are now coming to Hilltown.

Repair cafes are based on the simple fact that as a society we throw away many items that with a simple repair could be reused. Throwing away items is wasteful in many ways - it wastes money with people often buying new items unnecessarily and it wastes resources and contributes to climate change.

Many items that are broken also have deep meaning to people for sentimental and other reasons and repairing such items is important.A repair cafe is quite simply a community event where people bring their damaged or broken items for diagnosis and/or repair by volunteer fixers and also have an opportunity to connect with neighbours old and new over tea/coffee and cake.

Chairperson Nigel McKinney said: “We’ve had five very successful cafes in south down so far and are really excited about coming to Hilltown. We are delighted to have been working with Martina Byrne from Hilltown Community Association and have no doubt it’ll be a very successful event. We have volunteer fixers skilled in diagnosing and fixing all sorts of items - toys, clocks, clothes, bikes, furniture, electrical appliances, crockery - in fact our fixers will take a look at anything as long as it can be carried into the hall and isn’t dangerous!”.

He explained that hundreds of items have been fixed to date and that if any items can’t be fixed on the day, fixers give advice on where people can access specialist parts or repairs or if in fact an item can’t be repaired and needs to be disposed of.

As an entire volunteer led organisation, South Down Repair Cafe is always recruiting new volunteers. Volunteers are needed to help diagnose and fix items, organising and coordinating the cafe on the day, with catering and other tasks.