In April this year, Meanwood Repair Cafe received an invitation from Festival Republic, the organisation behind Leeds Festival, to run a Repair Cafe across all five days of the festival.
The aim was simple: to help festivalgoers mend and fix the things that can so easily get damaged or broken while camping — clothing, airbeds, trolleys, accessories, tent patches and much more.
Meanwood then contacted the other Repair Cafes in the Leeds Repair Cafe Network to see who might be interested in getting involved. That’s when Kath from Horsforth, Ian from Alwoodley and Walt from Garforth stepped forward to co-organise what became the “Repairium” at Leeds Festival.
Repairers from seven Repair Cafes across Leeds — Alwoodley, Armley, Crossgates, Garforth, Horsforth, Meanwood and the University of Leeds — came together for an intensive five days of fixing, mending and problem-solving.
And what a five days it was!
Together, we repaired 220 items, with a combined weight of nearly 250kg.
Not every repair could be made permanent, but in many cases we were able to give an item enough extra life to see it through the festival. More importantly, every repair provided an opportunity to share the message: reuse where you can, repair rather than replace, and challenge the culture of single-use and short-life consumption.
For festivalgoers, the Repairium offered a direct and practical way to avoid unnecessary replacement — proving that even when something is broken, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s finished.
Here are just some of the repairs we carried out during the five days.
Starting off with shoes and boots…
And there were clothes and bags…
Tents were obviously going to be a problem with broken poles, zips and damaged canvas…
Many had buggies and many of these were of poor build quality and needed attention…
And there’s always a miscellaneous category of fixes including glasses, airbeds, wheelchairs and walking frames…
There was also some media interest, with the Yorkshire Evening Post creating a Facebook Reel and ITV Calendar (local news) including it as a feature (starts at 2 minutes in).