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THe regional Fixfest will take place in the town’s Market Hall on Saturday, March 19, 2022, from 11am until 3pm.

The celebration of repair and waste reduction initiatives will offer a networking opportunity for anyone involved or interested in running Repair Cafes, toolbanks, Men in Sheds, scrapstores and similar projects

Groups including Chesterfield Repair Café, Laptopsforall from Chesterfield College, Dr Bike, Bikes@Monkey Park and Kakou collective will display their projects and ideas for repair, reuse and recycling.

Ed Brooks at work in the Repair Cafe at Monkey Park Social Enterprise, Chesterfield.

Aside from project workers, members of the public are welcome to visit and find out more.

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Fixfest and Chesterfield Repair Café organiser Margaret Hersee said: “In these uncertain times, people are looking for ways to re-connect with their community, to save money and live more sustainably. Community repair events bring people together to help each other, share skills, cut waste and the use of resources.

“At Chesterfield Repair Café we have lots of local volunteers with shared knowledge on how to help repair items such as lamps, small kitchen gadgets and clothes. If we can keep good household items working longer, it saves all the materials and emissions needed to make something new. So, we are not only helping each other but doing our bit to tackle the climate emergency.”

Margaret Hersee, organiser of Fixfest and Chesterfield Repair Cafe.

The event is organised by Transition Chesterfield with support from the Restart Project, which is a national repair campaigning and networking group, and Chesterfield Borough Council.

James Pickstone, who will be joining the event from The Restart Project, said: “More and more communities are discovering the benefits of repair and together, doing something that could have real and positive climate impact. But we need repair-friendly policies to make it much easier for people to get things fixed and unlock all those benefits to our communities, the economy and the planet. That’s why we urgently need a real Right to Repair enshrined in law.”

Derbyshire has at least six repair groups that are demonstrating the enefits of repair for our economy, planet and communities*Manufacturing and extracting materials, including for new products, is responsible for up to 50% of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide [5];

*The UK is the world’s second biggest producer of electronic waste per capita. Per person, we create 23.9kg of electronic waste each year. Repairing instead of discarding and buying new would cut our climate impact;

Margaret Hersee checks out a customer's chairs that need a repair at Monkey Park Social Enterprise, Chesterfield.

*Repair, reuse and remaking could create 450,000 green jobs across the country.;

*Three-quarters of the public think the UK Government should make sure products are easier to repair.

For more details, go to https://ti.to/chesterfield-repair-cafe/east-midlands-fixfest

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Chesterfield welcomes repairers at first regional Fixfest