 Mae'n clywbeth. Welcom yw Clare Clare Seek, ac mae'n gweithio yma ymlaen o'i unigwyr Café Portsmouth y bydd yn y Cymru, ac mae'r gweithio o'r cwmwythu unigwyr ymlaen o'r cyhoedd, sy'n gobeithio gwneud yn gweithio. Mae'n gweithio ar gyfer y cyfoswn ymlaen o'r gyfer ystafell gyfoswn yr unigwyr, a'i gweithio i'r gwybod o'r gweithio. Yn y gweithio gwylliant, rydyn ni'n gwybod o gweithio'r gwaith y gwyllteidlau, fel y rhan o'r llwyll i ymlaen, a mae gennym ni'n gweithio arlaed o'r gweithio. Yn hynny, mae'n gweithio'n gweithio, ond mae'n gweithio arnyntio ganodol, a mynd i gweithio i'r fflwydoedd cofnid. Mae'n gweithio'n gweithio'r gweithio, bod eich wneud yn ysgrifennu, ac mae'r gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio i fynd i gael o'r llwyth i gael yng Nghymru, a ddwy i'n gweithio i'r ffordd i'r gweithio. thesoon that pops up while we're doing presentations please feel free to pop that in the chat so you don't forget it and equally jot it down, and it is really helpful in the chat, which you'll find at the bottom of your screen, if you can put a cue at the start of a question, if that's different you know to just sort of add in a comment in or making something that just will help us to sort of sift through the comments the questions at the end to maybe bunch some of those together. Everyone is muted at this point just to reduced disruption yna what it's like on Zoom with cats and children and a manner of things that can happen. But obviously if we get the point of questions and you want to add something in, please do chip in. I think that's all housekeeping really. So we will get started and I'd like to introduce you to Hugo from the Restart Project who's going to start us off talking about the sort of bigger picture. So Hugo, I'll hand it over to you. Dwy g�ch. Fe'n medbydd fel rydyn ni'n gweinio'n gwneud. Rydyn ni'n gweinio'n gwneud yn unig i siarwch, gan gydag fawr hynny i'r gwynhewch. Rydyn ni'n gweinio sy'n medbydd, fe ddiddorsi'n gweinio'n gwneud. Dyddon yw'r tanlynedd sy'n gweinio... ..oedd yn ddigon o'n gweithio iddyn nhw, yn ystyried نedau symud... .. hynny'n mi ddweud yn chweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio.... ond we can't do much about, and the desire sometimes to actually become, yeah, getting rid of it is always there. But as an organisation, the restart project has two ways to try to change that, and one is like others in this call today. We've been running now for nine years community repair events that we call restart parties as they're mostly focused on electrical and electronics but are in the same vein of the repair cafes. And we try to make them fun, interactive, especially pre-pandemic. Right now it's a little bit different and a learning opportunity for everyone, whether you're volunteering or joining as a participant. But we also work to change the system to bring about the right to repair that will help us just not fix what we can in community events but fix everything else a lot more conveniently that we can do at the moment. This is a picture from a protest that happened in Brussels earlier this year. We are one of the co-founding members of the European Right to Repair campaign. In this case, asking for regulations to make printers last longer and avoid manufacturers getting away with completely non-ambitious voluntary agreements to make products just a little bit more sustainable but not enough from our perspective. And the reason we do all of this is indeed that there is nothing like extending the life of a product that you already have if you are to make a real impact on the environment. This was the theme of this year's International Repair Day a day and a weekend last week when groups from around the world celebrated the day online, in person those that could, I know some people in this call had events. We celebrated with an exhibition in London on the repair as essential around the world. And the reasons we focused on the environmental side of things are not just because of course it's COP26 in a couple of weeks but there's a lot more. And one key message from us is that the greenhouse gas emissions for all the products that we use are mainly happening at production stage. This is an example of a phone from a few years ago but the proportions remain the same. The vast majority up to 80% of the all the greenhouse emissions in a product will have occurred before you've ever switched that product on. So the only thing we can do is extend the consumer phase of that product. So the amount of years and not just months that a product gets used that's the only way and so repair and reuse are the most important ways to fix our relationship with the products that we use every day. But of course there's also the problem of e-waste. This stat is a little bit more well known. The fact that the UK specifically is the second per capita producer of electronic waste in the whole world but differently from Norway from as you see from this stat we manufacture and we produce a lot more in actual numbers of this waste. So it's really something that needs tackling and extending the lifetime of products will reduce the push to produce more and more e-waste. So our right to repair is under threat. What does it mean? It means that more often than not even people at community repair events experience that we don't have sufficient access to affordable spare parts. So when you need to replace a part often it's too expensive or hard to find. Repair manuals and diagnostic tools are not available to everyone and often we find alternative ones but it's not the same and we need to spend time and we don't access all the official information that manufacturers should be making available and not uniquely important but crucial design for repair is not there. Products are not designed to be repaired. It might take too much time or we might risk of breaking a product further in the attempt to reach to the part that needs fixing. Many of you will have heard around July a big celebration that now in the UK we have the right to repair our products and unfortunately I hate to have to break the news that this is not the case yet and that's why we think that a lot more needs to happen to make the right to repair our reality in the UK as well as in Europe. As we campaign both in Europe and in the EU and in the UK we know that the introduction of a very initial positive regulation that makes some spare parts available for a number of years for white goods and televisions and more repairable designs is a positive announcement but it only applies to brand new products that are put on the market now and only gives limited access to people in community repairs or consumers and only a lot more access to spare parts to professional repairs with extra caveats and gray areas that remain big question marks on what is the future of this regulation but it doesn't apply to a vast range of products that people bring to community repair events and the thing is we've been collecting data alongside partners from around the world showing the wide range of products that are brought to these events and people it's not like people just want washing machines to be everyone who wants repairable product want all of products to be repairable and longer lasting so we really need to change regulation at a much broader level and the UK public does want the government to take action on repairable products the data here is three years old but it shows really really overwhelming support and subsequent polling that we've recently done and that we are about to make public shows overwhelming support in the UK for additional measures to push right to repair way beyond what's happened so far on white goods so keep an eye on the restart project channels for more communication on that in coming days but at UK level in terms of government we're still behind when it comes to adopting a similar approach to what the EU is currently discussing the EU is working already on regulation to make smartphones and tablets and computers more repairable and there's been a strong message coming from in the UK from the House of Commons the Environmental Audit Committee with a really strong report asking for right to repair to be enshrined in legislation but we don't know as of yet of any plan of the UK government to adopt similar legislation for additional products and that's why we've been running a petition asking for a real right to repair in the UK meaning asking for affordable parts and repair information available to everyone asking the government to commit to covering a wider range of products ideally all products but starting with smartphones and tablets and remove the VAT on repairs which would have been a lot more complicated when the UK was part of Europe but it's possible and would affect positively the repairs done on all the products that we already all have at home I'll be happy to talk more in the questions on all of this but thank you for listening and yeah looking forward to hear your thoughts brilliant thank you Hugo I think lots lots to think about people and if you've got as I say if you've got any questions feel free to pop them in the chat and we'll come back to them in a little while um so next I'm going to hand over to Chris who is um darling in from Belfast this evening and it's part of Repair Cafe Belfast she's going to talk to us a bit about um more a community level um organising repair events and that kind of thing so over to you Chris all right I've got a couple of errant children who are just leaving very much care and it's really good to be here and to see so many people interested in repair and I'm here to just talk a little bit about um what's happening in communities up and down the country um and give you the example of what we're doing in Belfast to repair together and to bring people together to repair and um given that start the funny thing is my first line that I wrote in my notes here is I've got three young children and so something is always getting broken on a daily basis or at least a weekly basis the knees are coming out of small boys trousers kitchen gadgets push chairs bikes and it used to feel kind of overwhelming really how have I got time to deal with all of this and why do these things not last and what am I going to do now um and you can kind of understand why people um think the easiest thing is just to replace the item and there's not time to repair or it feels like a bit of a hassle but then I came across the idea of a repair cafe and the idea is a pop-up community event where people can get help to fix the broken things and I had so much broken stuff at home that I thought we need to get one of these in Belfast so I'm just going to share my screen here if this works so this is us at our first event just coming up to four years ago we had never met um none of us had ever set foot in a community repair event before because I've never been one in Northern Ireland it was snowing and it was two weeks before Christmas hence the tinsel I was seven months pregnant and we really had no idea what we were doing or how it would go but it was an absolutely brilliant morning and we were completely hooked uh people brought a camping table light up shoes a talking elbow we had a tandem bicycle we had lamps we had headphones kettles toasters radios all kinds of things that people use every day which break and which they wanted to get fixed a pair cafe is a pair cafe Belfast is one of around 200 community repair groups and projects around the UK and one of the strengths is that they're rooted in their own communities so they reflect that community and they have a different flavour or they have a they have different connections in Belfast we have no fixed abode we move around to different venues around the city and that's got a lot of benefits for us it means that we reach lots more people lots more neighbourhoods and it means we get to work with a lot of different partners and hosts we like to pay attention to the atmosphere we create so the pop-up cafe is just as much a part of it as the repairs it makes people feel welcome it creates a social space to connect we use big tables as you can see there in the in the picture so people can meet somebody new maybe we have a few repair books to browse or some recycled crafts for kids and it makes the whole thing a fun experience it's not just another thing on the to-do list that has to get done in terms of getting something fixed it becomes some a joyful morning it's very important to us that the repair cafe is pay as you feel it means there's no economic barrier to getting something repaired which is one of people's biggest concerns when something breaks is how much is this going to cost would it be better for me to just go and buy a new one is that more affordable but it also creates the sense of community rather than operating as a service people are very generous and the donations cover our running costs so we didn't need to get any outside funding until we started taking on other projects and doing other bits of work at the heart of the repair cafe oh there's the buns yet sorry for that at the heart of the repair cafe are our volunteers and something I was really anxious about when I was starting was finding people with the right fixing skills because I am not a terrific fixer I've learned a lot from hanging around these people but it's not it's not my area of expertise but it turns out they were there all alone but they were in garden sheds and they were at kitchen tables fixing things maybe fixing things for friends and family or just tinkering themselves they weren't widely appreciated or seen in our community and I think that's the case in many communities but actually by creating a repair project we created a space for them to come out in the open and and contribute their skills to the community and they absolutely get as much out of it as everyone else who participates people like Ricky here Ricky trained as an apprentice electrical engineer in the Belfast shipyards the same shipyards that built the Titanic and he comes along with his his friend John who joined as a mechanical apprentice in the shipyards and now they're both retired and they come and they volunteer together and just really enjoy the crack and this is Francesca she's a software engineer originally from Italy before making her home in Belfast and she said I believe in the part of giving and receiving and it is a great joy for me to offer my technical skills as a service for other people I think the repair cafe is a great initiative to bring people together and try to be an alternative voice in our consumerist society and there are other volunteers who are just as important that's not just having people who can fix things there's a lot of organising that goes on there's a lot of making people feel welcome and lots of lots of people involved in that there are lots of different things that we can fix at a repair cafe in each group will will tackle a slightly different set of things people have different expertise but we always ask people to to write up on a poster what they what they got fixed at our events and people bring all sorts of things um for all sorts of motivations and we find people are often heart sore about the way that we're living and about our throwaway society and there's official visible relief when they come in to the repair cafe and they realise there are other options there's someone to help they don't have to do it on their own it's something practical that that you can do that they can do that we can do today together it's not abstract and so it does offer a practical tangible benefit for people but it runs deeper than that um and i was thinking back as i was um preparing for tonight i was thinking back to our first event and a toaster that was brought along um something many of us have that breaks um but this toaster was brought along the owner i think i have a picture of it here yeah the owner had taken it apart and tried to fix it the year before and they'd not been able to fix it and they had not been able to get it back together and it had sat um because it was a good toaster and they didn't want to get rid of it it sat for ages and then suddenly this repair cafe happened and they were like brilliant i know exactly what i'm going to take so he brought along this toaster and we fixed him up connected him with a with a repairer who worked on it that morning they'd never met each other he spent about an hour together tackling this toaster and um they thought they'd got it working and the repairer said um if only we had a piece of bread and we could try this out and um somebody who was passing from the the cafe team said oh we've got bread in the kitchen because we're going to have have some soup with the volunteers went and got a slice of bread put the bread in the toaster and you could have cut the tension with a knife this group of people who had never met each other before were gathered around this toaster and very emotionally involved in whether this bread was going toaster or not because there's something restorative about repairing um and there's particularly something about doing it together in community rather than just as a stola experience and um the bread did toast and it worked um and it was just kind of um it's a story we always come back to and remember because it's sort of like um reminds us about actually what's going on under the surface it can look like um just a kind of very useful practical thing to get loads of things fixed but actually it can be a really deeper experience for people that actually sends them home thinking more about their stuff and their relationship with their stuff and every time I'm sure that that man makes toast he remembers coming along again at the end of the repair cafe. People have all sorts of reasons for coming I mentioned that a lot of people feel just generally frustrated at the way we're living a lot of people want to do that but to live more sustainably to think about climate change um but it can feel very difficult as an individual to do that and to to um to respond in lots of ways it can feel like a real uphill struggle to live in the way that you feel you want to be but here's something that we can do together um but people also tell us not just about the environmental benefits but all kinds of other benefits in terms of coming together emotional mental health um that it's changed their way of thinking um it's a common experience for people both visitors and volunteers to say that they came for the fixing but they stayed for the community feeling and one of the things that started happening after we've been going for a year or two is that other communities got in touch and they said would you come and run a repair cafe in our village or our town or our area and um we weren't keen to do that but we were happy to talk to them about setting up something in their own area um and we started working with four communities outside Belfast that had held events just before the lockdown but it showed us that this model can work anywhere um there's one of the the group on the top right hand is in a tiny little village um down in the countryside um at the bottom there they're in a community community cinema in a seaside town here in northern Ireland over on the left it's a market hall in a in a kind of big a bigger town um and in every case they found the people that want to fix and they've also found people who really value the the project and want to get involved and bring their broken things so i know that existing repair cafes all over the UK are really happy to share their experience and their learning and help other people get off the ground um and it feels like collectively it's something practical that we can do to help um play our part in in fixing the climate gap so thanks very much for the opportunity to tell you our story a little bit of our story um and i hope if you're not part of a repair cafe already you might find one in your local area and go along and check it out and see whether you think it might be something that would work where you are that's brilliant thank you chris and um i know there's quite a few of us who run repair cafes on this call but it's brilliant every time you hear a story of how another repair cafe runs you always get ideas there are various things in the chat there about oh we're going to do that poster idea and i limit how there's such diversity within repair cafes and we start products across the country and the world in fact and um it's always great to pick up different ideas um and there's a very interesting little um connection here as well with toasters so um what we're going to do just before we go on to um the q&a um is i'm joined here this evening by Guy from you can come off mute i can introduce myself i'm from the uh Cambridge repair cafe thank you and we've got canal here as well i'd like to come off mute as well canal everyone uh i'm from system of a decote so me and phil work have worked together on a couple of couple of repair cafes brilliant thank you for joining us this evening and um we just wanted to actually hear from some people who had um you know sort of an individual experience of of repair and um so i thought i'd just ask you guys a few questions this evening and then if people have additional questions we can sort of come to that towards the end but um canal maybe i can start with you and i'm wondering sort of you know if you think back a few years ago well toaster is what maybe think when chris was talking about that toaster story i know you have a slightly different toaster story but you know in the past if something had broken um would it have been your default to you know get the screwdriver and try and fix it how do you um that wasn't actually uh the most uh that wasn't that wasn't my my go-to path usually but um i'm the kind of person to go around the cherry shop to find rather than buying a new one i'm kind of person who kind of try and look for repurposing stuff and uh one day my wife found sustainable decote uh on on facebook and i say well that's that's great so we joined the page and there was there was an event coming up called repair cafe interesting let's have a go uh so we took our toaster uh unfortunately couldn't be repaired it was beyond beyond it could but then we saw that that the environment and and and what the purpose was for that that particular you know gathering that these people are just offering free services to bring things back to life and you know uh i thought that was brilliant you know brilliant idea for brilliant application of sustainability uh and and then we um we carried on going to these cafes and recently just after lockdown uh there was an email from Phil i think that mentioned that we have a couple of sessions for training yourself to to be able to repair yourself and and even contribute if you would like uh so these were like basic absolutely basic uh electrical i'm not from electrical background i'm from a software background but i don't i'm the kind of person who would not open a lot of things if i weren't sure that how to put it back so i went to these couple of training sessions and um managed to fix things faster than i was hoping myself to do at those training events so Phil said uh yeah why don't you come and help us out on repair cafes that we hold here i was saying that yeah i'll definitely give it a try all i could do is soldering that that's that's my forte now apparently um but then uh i think a couple of months ago there was a repair cafe event i went there knowing only soldering whereas there were veterans who had designed you know circuit boards for spaceships and stuff like that so i felt a bit more comfortable that you know if i can't solve this there is somebody there is somebody who certainly can uh so i felt very comfortable that way but then my very first thing i repaired or helped solder was a radio control toy car and and it came in it was just sat there and and nobody kind of thought it was sitting in the queue in and that's probably the only thing i could do so i had to go at it and and managed to repair it and the result was a a kid you know it wanted to see you working and there was absolutely no over the moon about it so um that that's that that's first fruit of that labour i would say for me personally being associated with the repair cafe going to these training sessions and second as a side effect i would say a byproduct was a bit more confidence in myself that okay i can i can tackle this i can open things up worse come i can go to a repair cafe and then hopefully somebody senior would have a look at it if i can't put it back or make it work so that's the kind of confidence it kind of gave me and then the month after we had another repair cafe and i went in again and this time i graduated from a toy car to a places in remote control that was another success story so i think i'm gradually i feel like i'm gradually growing confidence that hopefully at some point i'll repair one of the spaceships if i can and well and a great start from broken toaster to now being i think affectionately known as the soldier a ninja of did cuts repair cafe as well so brilliant how you've come on and guy can ask you so um i think uh i heard a rumor that you um as a teenager used to you know jump into skips to find things i'll try not to jump all the way in but it's true that i can't walk past the skip and not crane my neck and if i see something good i can't i can't leave it behind the idea that it might just be left and go into a landfill when it could be rescued i mean two doors down from me i won't pick it up because in pieces two doors down from me yesterday i was cycling home there was a wheelie bin that the recycling men had refused to take because it had electronics in it that had some sort of broken bluetooth speaker in it well obviously i had to take it so i've spent this afternoon just pulling it apart and i've diagnosed that it had a broken volume dial and a blown speaker so i've opened my drawer of speaker bits from other things i've taken apart and found a suitable thing and i'll get a replacement volume dial on ebay and there you go it's a all right it's not quite in perfect condition but it's working and that would have otherwise gone to landfill and it's things like that that give me the addiction that i it's terrible i can't leave it behind and it so it says that you've had quite a different experience of kind of coming into the community repair network um from canal you know you've obviously got that history of tinkering and and learning things so how did you first come across of the community repair and um you know your local repair cafe yeah so i i had sort of had this uh bug for a long time and um when i moved to Cambridge from a much smaller town south of London with no such exciting things happening um i i don't i don't exactly know how i came across the concept um but i thought well that sound it must have been on facebook through like a local group and i thought well that sounds really interesting i'll go down and see what it's like i saw it and it just blew my mind uh because all along i had i love the idea of being able to do it for other people but i'd always been too afraid that there might be some sort of liability issue or something like that um and it just opened my eyes so the fact that actually this is very clearly a possibility um and the the repair cafes have been functioning and doing hundreds of repairs over the years and haven't as far as i'm aware been sued by anybody for a repair that went wrong um and so it just really gave me a lot more confidence to to start doing it a bit more and a similar experience to canal that having the other people around at the repair cafe that had more experience that been doing it for a longer time um also reassured me that even if i did get a bit stuck then i would be able to have somebody to talk to about it that definitely seems to come across um in both of your stories that sort of learning from each other as well um and and having people to kind of share share the bug with and and do things so yeah thank you very much both of you for joining us this evening i'm sure as we come to questions there might be some more things that would be really great to hear your sort of volunteering perspective for me so thank you um now have we let me have a quick look in our chats and things um if anyone's thought of any questions we'll have a look through the chat and the ones that we've got there but equally you know if you want to use the the hand up feature or anything like that um let's see so um what might start with is just going back to um some of the questions maybe for you ugo um around the right to repair if we maybe go back to that um oh there's an initial question i think from one of your graphs about what what are they doing in Norway to create so much e-waste although maybe it'd be interesting to also know who had the least e-waste and therefore what they would do well but what's Norway doing Norway well i think uh definitely there is it's a quite wealthy country per capita and uh so there is certainly like a lot of consumption of electronic devices probably more so per capita on average than than here um interestingly Norway for such products actually has um quite useful warranties a longer term warranties for products such as smartphones and the likes up to five years but that doesn't seem by itself to reduce the amount of e-waste that they generate so um they have some interesting model there for a longer time warranty so if you have a faulty product even if it's four and a half years old uh if it's of a certain value you can go and get it replaced or in some cases getting repaired um which is much better if it if we can require it to be repaired but i don't know what exactly they do but certainly it's a fairly affluent society and probably that fuels extra consumption of products can i make a comment on that one of the things i noticed about that table was that a lot of the countries that are at the top are quite high income countries and i think this is one of the challenges that we have as repairs that or well not for us as repair cafes because of course we're working for free but if people's idea is well i need to find a repair business a shop that can repair this for me if your average country wage for skilled labour is 50 or 60 or 100 pounds an hour then you're going to very much struggle to compete when you're choosing against something where you buy the factory and then the marginal cost of producing additional units is almost nothing so in a country like Norway it kind of makes sense that people would maybe be much more reluctant to pay for a repair because the the chance of that repair failing is non-zero and they're going to have to pay a significant amount for somebody skilled labour that that's certainly an issue like the cost of labour for for for repairs absolutely but and obviously we want repairs to be paid fairly so how do we reduce the cost of repairs in in other ways and one is by making the repair easier so that it might take less time and so that they can make more money by repairing more things rather than charging potentially a lot and also reducing taxation on repair by vat for example as well as reducing the cost of spare parts which currently could be a burden when they're not reused parts like you have for speakers so of course there is a multiple set of ways but you're absolutely right I lived for a few years in in Kenya where I took a lot of inspiration for for some of the work we're doing today and over there I still remember one time having a headphone set bought in the UK that just to have a look at it one folded the manufacturer wanted 45 pounds and I got it repaired in 15 minutes at the repair shop in Kenya for three pounds so while also been learning the skills that I would have to repair myself the following time so yes of course there is an issue there but also some products have become just simply too cheap because the environmental impact of this product is not factored in in the price of brand new products and yeah so we need to really change the system basically it makes me think as well when you were saying about your experience in Kenya one of the things obviously for some of the sort of repair cafe and restart projects is really helping people to learn as well how to do it themselves next time and it's brilliant when you get someone that then you know sends you a message going well this time I've managed I've managed to fix it which is equally brilliant and so another question before we move on maybe to some of the extra more sort of community repair questions and you go again this view is just around how is the restart project able to make an impact in Brussels from obviously now being outside of the UK yes that's an excellent question and we don't do this alone we co-funded the European Rector Repair campaign which by the way it's European meaning it concerns all countries in the geographic sense of Europe which could include Norway, Switzerland and the UK as well as the EU countries and it has members already in 17 countries it's a coalition of over 80 organisations some of them are based in Brussels and restart employs a campaigner who is based in Brussels and helps coordinate messaging and bringing together a mix of the policy demands that some of our more policy-minded members come up with with campaigning and messaging to help raise awareness so we're certainly not doing that alone and I agree that it would not be best for an organisation based in the UK to tell the EU what needs to be done but in collaboration definitely. Thank you go and Chris maybe you could take some of the repair cafe sort of more community repair cafe questions so one of what we've got is you know how do the groups work practically so you know are we registered charities businesses bank accounts insurance all those kind of things? Well as I mentioned whether there are 200 groups and they operate in different ways there's no one size fits all and actually most of the groups have come up from the grassroots and organised independently and the community repair network that Claire mentioned at the beginning of the talk is an effort to actually bring us closer together and encourage dialogue so that we can kind of share those experiences so for us in Belfast we're a community interest company but we operated as an unincorporated community group before we we registered and found that others operate as charities some are organised into groups of repair cafes which have a offer a number of structure and some repair cafes are projects of other community groups that do a number of different initiatives and running a repair cafe is just one of them so there are lots of different models and I think it kind of really reflects the local circumstances and how the group came into being what structure they have. Does that answer everything Claire was there something else in that question? Yeah I think as well I suppose other than the question that always gets asked most is that things like health and safety policies and insurance might be supported in that as well. Yes and it has been a challenge I think for many groups too to kind of make it clear what they do to insurers in order for insurers to have a clear understanding about what the risks are and but some groups operate without insurance and have kind of organised themselves to do that. I know certainly here in Ireland there were a lot of groups that found it hard to get insurance and so I did bike and textile repairs and stayed away from electronics that was how they managed that risk. So I mean certainly it is possible now there are a number of insurers that do understand the concept because the groups have been more common I think and there's been more dialogue with different insurers so there's a number of different products available that provide public liability insurance liability that would cover your volunteers from accident but I think it's actually while it's easy to think about risk in terms of all the things that could go terribly wrong I think it's actually not a high risk activity especially if you have a good kind of health and safety policy that kind of keeps you up keeps you right and ensures that like a guy in canal touched on it there you know that people who are offering to volunteer are operating within their skill and comfort zone and that they're not taking on repairs that they don't know how to do and so there's a lot about kind of building up a really responsible ethos and kind of a sense that health and safety is a shared responsibility and our experience is that there have been no accidents and no issues and that actually people feel our volunteers feel terribly responsible to those they're helping that they want to make sure they're in a better situation when they leave and certainly we've had cases where people have brought items for repair and actually being told and advised that that item can't be made safe and they should not they should cut the plug off and dispose of it and actually they are safer because they came to a repair cafe and got that advice than if they had carried on using it so I think it of course that is a concern it's something that experienced repair cafes are more than happy to discuss with people who are getting involved in this and who have a lot of questions about it of course it's an issue people are concerned about but I think it's about keeping it in proportion and and being wise but not letting the fear of the worst-case scenarios not be doing something which is very practical and beneficial. I know that's really good and also it's interesting as someone who helps other people set up repair cafes it's quite interesting depending on where people are coming from so I'll often be approached by someone who's maybe part of a parish council and obviously they're thinking around risk and all those kind of things can be quite different from you know someone who's linked with a men's shed and wants to expand that and just loves fixing and so you know it's all about finding that sort of sensible ground and making people aware of the repair cafe is neighbours helping neighbours and if you think about that and you organise your events to reflect that and that's why you know I spoke there about how important the community side of things is for us because that's it is important because it feels really really good but it also has a lot of benefits in terms of managing risk because people are very concerned to help their neighbours and not do anything that might harm them but equally those neighbours are then very grateful for the help and the support that they have received so if you if you think about with that mindset it kind of makes it feel more manageable and helps you to navigate those issues. That's great and actually that maybe moves on to one of the questions which someone's asking them saying do people pay for spare parts do people sometimes need to come back for a couple of cafe sessions to get something mended I'm just thinking what we're talking about sort of paying for things as well maybe comes into that. Certainly well I think most repair cafes would operate on a pay-as-you-feel basis as we would some would be a little clearer about you know these are the parts in Belfast we tend to send people away to get their own spare parts because we don't have any premises and we don't we wouldn't be in a position to keep a stock of spare parts for every potential thing that could go wrong. We have a small fix-it box which has some useful things in it but we couldn't possibly have everything so sometimes people do go away and they get a diagnosis but they can't get a kind of surgery at their first visit and they do need to kind of but we do say you know if you go away you can get this part this is what you're looking for here's where you might be able to get it if you can't work out you know bring it back to the repair cafe next time and we'll be able to fit that for you. So yeah I mean people I again people tend to be very generous and they're very keen to support the project and when they're in a position to and people don't want don't don't want the project to be out of pocket for having got got parts for them or or materials to carry out the repair so yeah the kind of again the kind of analogy that's really helpful is that thinking thinking about a community repair group is like a first aid clinic for your stuff and sometimes it can't be fixed um sometimes you need to go to the hospital because you need more time specialist tools um or or parts or or special training that are not available especially in light of what you go says in terms of how difficult things are sometimes made to be repaired um so we wouldn't hope to um fit fix everything that comes but at least if we can provide people with some advice with um a diagnosis that's still really useful starting point and they know what to do next or even to say this item isn't going to be repairable at least people can let go of it and they feel like um you know they can move on. I'm just thinking as well I'm guessing like canal for example when you're doing soldering you come with your soldering kit I'm guessing and some solder and you don't you know there's a basic amount of stuff you have with you uh no I don't actually I borrow there's a lot of senior people who come with that kit there's a sentiment Chris Chris Elsie um he's got his kit so usually he's fixing maybe other things so the soldering iron he's not always in use I just apply my skills using that and uh yeah brilliant and that's another example because lots of people bring their stuff and but if you haven't got something for the job there's always like hang on a sec who's got sort of sharing things exactly yeah maybe just to say a different perspective on how else it could be done in Cambridge we're very fortunate that a local DIY store um has offers to store a collection of tools and small consumable parts so like fuses resistors capacitors like just bits and bobs that are very commonly involved in a repair and and then we've had a donation of tools from um is it draper yeah yeah um draper have donated like uh tools to go in that toolkit which is then stored at um Macai's DIY store and so for each time that we run a repair cafe um or in the local area the repair cafe is asked to contribute 20 pounds towards the like consumables and bits and bobs and maintenance in the kit and it means that pretty much anything is going to be in that toolkit I have lots of my own tools which I obviously love and prefer to use my own but if I am as I very often am cycling to the repair cafe then I can quite happily choose to just shove in an adjustable screwdriver and a multi tool and I know that everything else will be there and likewise anybody can turn up who's got any level of tool ownership and so long as they've got the skills to use a spanner or pliers or a soldering iron then there's going to be the equipment that they need to to do things and there's things in there that I don't have like we have a variable hot air gun which is incredibly useful I know most people don't have a variable voltage supply which again is insanely useful when you're doing an electronic repair um so that's uh if it's an option for people I'd encourage it because it works really really well for us brilliant there is there is such diversity and remember as well that it's not always just electricals and computing things that we're fixing so sometimes it's a needle and thread and um definitely fit them in your bag on your bike however it might be but yeah there's a great breadth of stuff that's repaired one of the ladies who does textiles uh I'm pretty sure Gina comes to every repair cafe that we do um she comes with a bike trailer and brings a sewing machine and uh yeah so there's no reason a bike needs to be a barrier to bring lots of equipment you should see my bike trailer it's a good exercise I'm really glad put some of this flat let's put it that way um just um let's take a slightly different question we've got for Ugo here um the restart project offers a 10 week course for school children does anyone know if any organisations are interested in doing something similar for adults Ugo I just wondered if you're aware of anything yeah um so uh just to clarify that project was an experiment and at the moment we just share what we've done with it we're not actively pursuing this activity in other schools we don't have the capacity to do that at the moment but it's also out there for others to to learn from and see what might be reusable by them in other circumstances but um it's interesting what what your what this question is interesting because just this afternoon I was in a different online call discussing the links between the the culture of repair emerging from community activities and the need for the right to repair and whether this should be inspiring people that are doing engineering and product design work at at universities or people that are already uh in these professions I know the question was specific more about courses for adults in general but there's clearly some really transferable skills that can inspire a rethink of how we look at products and and not just how we fix them in a way in addition to that I think in in London we've seen some spaces that run courses in a way inspired by this type of DIY approach and helping you learn basic electricals or other more hands-on skills for other types of making but I'm not aware of classes specifically to teach repair like in a formalised way if others do it would be great to hear yeah well I was going to say Phil um I'm wondering if you've got anything to add on the base of you um got canal on to a course I'm just wondering how did that come about is that something that's ongoing or yes so this is something so something to do is part of the community action group network in Oxfordshire which is a quite a large group I think they've almost reached a hundred separate groups some of those are kind of um uh worker and co-ops and things like that but a lot of them are groups small community groups like sustainable digpup and they put on these training sessions for electricals and it was it was very much an introduction to electrical items and so sort of rewind plug having to go with kind of wire strippers and things like that and then it moved on to having to go with soldering and so they had soldering kits that you were pre pre-made that you just put the components on that then tested soldered but had to go at soldering them onto the board and so that's where they're at the moment they weren't that we haven't got any courses to say kind of now here's how to actually diagnose and treat us I think this is more this is at the moment that they're getting through experience so it's like canal he comes and joins an experience uh repairer and then they get kind of experienced that way um so that's where how it's running at the moment I don't know if there's anyone else that's on the call who's got any um experience of that but if you have feel free to just to say that some repair cafes do run um skills courses skills shares I know the group and bath run a series of how-to workshops like how to do bike maintenance how to use a sewing machine how to do we've just done visible darning this week um don't know if any on electricals um but I also just to reinforce the idea of bringing something to a repair cafe it's not like going to the phone shop and leaving it off at the counter and coming back and picking it up later you you as a visitor are part of the experience and you get to um be as involved as you want to be in um participating in the repair and seeing what's inside your your gadget and then you know um watching the repairer or or taking part as they go step by step through the process so there's a lot to be learned there it's not a course but you know it is an education in that wider way and I know there's also a group in um in based in Edinburgh called the remade network that are looking at setting up a repair academy where people would be trained in repair skills with the view of of kind of setting up so I guess a development of a repair kind of um project but that's more of a business that would be on high streets and that people would have those kind of repair skills for repairing gadgets because you know 50 years ago there was a repair shop on every high street where you could take your kettle where it broke or your toaster and they have just mostly all gone um and you know if we are going to live in a more sustainable way we need to get back to that and we need to work out where the skills are going to come from to do that it was an interesting session that was part of this afternoon part of ethical consumer week which is about the future of the high street and on that they had people um such as you know library of things and different groups saying you know it would be great to get much more about repair and uh borrowing and sharing on our high streets although an also very interesting dilemma of the challenge of who owns all those buildings and how hard it is to sort of get into the high street but really interesting discussion and Nicole from Cambridge repair cafe did you have something to add in? Yeah hello everyone um yeah so we've run a couple of introduction to electrical repairs um so quite targeted towards women actually because we wanted to get women along to sort of feel more confident to try things at home so we um got I think eight broken lamps and we got people to try and fix them and so everyone you worked in pairs and you kind of worked through the whole diagnostic and the process of trying to work out what's going on and and there was obviously an experienced supervisor so and and that's the evening was a couple of hours with a broken lamp and trying to bring it back to life and introducing you yeah to stripping back and soldering and the diagnostic stuff yeah you work quite well. I like that idea and Igor was just mentioning as well I had forgotten to say um yeah you guys do skill share sessions but amongst the volunteers sort of spreading the fields. Yeah in a sense trying to help maybe newcomers gain extra skills and reduce some of their own yeah increase their confidence level and also it's nice because during the repair events it's normally quite hectic you're just trying to help people as as many people as possible and so there isn't as much time for a more relaxed uh just learn from a fellow volunteer experience but we've not really done these um during the pandemic as online sessions to yeah avoid people being too stressed by all this online sessions but we hopefully be able to resume them soon in person as they're kind of social opportunities for people to just get together and have some snacks and have a chat while learning something new. And that fits perfectly into the next question that I was going to suggest uh tackle which is the question of how soon did various repair cafes representative return to business after the various lockdowns um so um if you'd like to go Chris Johnson. Let's get to the therapy. By local situation I know some repair cafes started up again last autumn in between the lockdowns and operatives um and others haven't come back yet and many I think are in the process of exploring it and making changes to the way that they operate so I know for ourselves and I know for Claire and Portsmouth we have started using a booking system which we didn't use before so that we know um how many people to expect and we don't have too many people coming to our events and have crowding that way so there are different ways of working I know the repair cafe in Glasgow has operated outdoors um for the last several months um I don't know what they're going to do in Scottish winter now um but I think I think it's a very creative community and people are keen to get back and keen to find creative ways to do that and durable ways that are going to last whatever the ups and downs of the coming months may be um but I think also for ourselves we were very careful not to move ahead of where our volunteers were comfortable um we had a lot of people who had been shielding and we didn't want to leave people behind we didn't want people to feel under pressure to come back so we have gone very slowly and gradually um we did two trial run events within our team before we did anything with the public so that we were sure of ourselves sure of our systems sure of what worked and what we didn't you know what just was a faff and we didn't really to bother with um and so yeah we had our first public public event on Saturday and we didn't even publicise it very much so it wasn't even properly back so I I suspect it'll be the new year before we're properly back in action yeah just saying Portsmouth we've been back since July but with sort of quite a lot of measures in place so you know um open doors open windows masks um booking system and um but it continued you know word is getting out that we're back and it's great and we are keeping those measures in place so that because we want to be able to sort of ride whatever storm and certainly you know COVID is increasing down here at the minute so um but we're hopeful that keeping that in place you know you can keep everyone safe but keep keep fixing some groups did continue to operate through lockdown with with drop off services as well I know the repair cafe in Malvern Hills fixed something was it 400 items or something throughout lockdown and they had a they had a pick up and drop off service instead of having repair events now obviously you miss out on the whole um experience of being together and doing it together being able to share knowledge um and it's a lot less fun but it allowed them to help people who maybe were reliant on certain household appliances um and who were shielding and who didn't want to leave their homes they were able to help them so that was really valuable and a lot of groups also moved online and and tried different ways of of connecting and encouraging repair us in Belfast we did a fortnightly mending pile meetup um throughout the winter where people brought their mending pile that never got attended to and there was a little opportunity to kind of socially get together and and all stitch and get some advice about how to tackle different textile repairs so yeah and I think one of the benefits that Malvern's that we're talking about was actually for some of their repairs it was a real lifeline for them during the lockdowns as well if something to actually do so the sort of mental health not just for those people that are getting stuff fixed but actually for some of the repairs that you know it was something to do plus apparently their repair rate increased greatly because obviously they had a huge amount of time to sit tinkering and doing things so um I think their repair uh yeah their repair productivity went through the week so um and all that maybe took about time um we've got a question here about some of the repairs like pieces of furniture broken things that need gluing um they're saying some of that is a skilled job just even trying to find the right glue but um I guess you know how to repair cafes face those things I jump in again I think experience is the key there um certainly we have seven or eight different kinds of glue in our fix-it box um but it's our experienced uh repairers who have repaired things in the past and therefore know what um what will work what will be the best kind and have a good steady hand and there was a lovely story on saturday there at a repair cafe someone who brought a piece of furniture um was sort of like a very like an antique footstool and the the um the legs had worn the weather legs twisted into the footstool had worn away and so they could no longer be attached and a couple of the fixers got together and they were brainstorming different potential ways to repair it and in the end they didn't have the right tool for the job but they made a little video clip with um describing how to go about the repair so that the person was able they knew the person who had brought it knew somebody who would be able to actually fix it locally but to kind of describe how the repair could happen step by step and what they would do if only they had had the right tools with them so that was a real team effort um but guy you want it to jump in there with yeah guy um yeah the no I forgot what I was concerned that we were to wear glues or different types of yeah I mean it was I think it was basically to mirror Chris's point to say that experience really helps um and when you've got this toolkit that's got all different kinds of glue in there um you can have a go with a little patch on and out of the way point and and see if the first one that takes you my first resort is usually super glue because the super strong and it sets really quickly but if you find that that's not sticking then you can move on to to something else um but yeah I think experience makes all the difference here I have to have got very knowledgeable about glue as well in the last four years I never knew there was such a variety of epoxy resins and sugru and all these kind of and the other my other top tip was especially when we had sort of china repairs having my daughter along was really helpful because you know smaller fingers can fix the biggest fingers can't do and that's the thing that I really love is trying to encourage kids to get involved in this um we haven't managed it quite so much um since covid but um it was brilliant we used to have you know uh kid volunteers so parents would bring their children along to volunteer with them and really part of the activity and you know whether it was um welcoming people or helping to fix stuff the kids really learned and got involved so much so that my daughter's about 10 13 now but um you know she's sort of the go-to at school of like this is broken what do you think we should do just wow I mean that's the future we need isn't it that's the thing I think about repair cafes or repair projects is they're creating that space where the focus is on repair and so actually suddenly you can pull your knowledge you can explore options you can um you can go and research like the the internet is a fantastic resource and suddenly people are thinking about repair it becomes your first instinct instead when something breaks you think I must replace that you suddenly your first instinct is I wonder who can fix that I wonder how I can go about fixing that I wonder where I can get the knowledge or the advice or the professional who could help me and like in repair cafe Belfast we've looked at something like 1200 items since we started so there is a bank of knowledge within our team now about what's going to work what's going to be useful what kinds of things people bring um you see some of the same things over and over again we have a balloon in our fix-it box um an empty balloon and it's because one time it was someone was fixing um a really precious china cup that had been given to somebody and they were trying to glue it together but by inflating this balloon slightly they were able to get just to hold the cup while they glued it and get the purchase on it so we never would have thought of that in advance you know what do we need in our to-do list but now having seen that happen it's there in case we ever need it again um so it's that collective knowledge um which is about like we have 50 volunteers about them all coming together and about having that shared experience and just creating that focus on repairing our stuff it raises the profile it changes our way of thinking about it um yeah brilliant love it we've got the end of like a wax candle in our repair kit and that's for zips and things like that you know it's these tiny little odd things you're like why is they in there but even this week we need to sit on this week and now i'm going to pre um pre-warn this question for those of you that i know love to answer questions about fixing things we have got a question about repair this does not mean that you've now got five minutes to diagnose into it so in a really quick answer anyone can answer but Rose is asking her amplifier won't switch off is it a simple repair who's got an opinion it's a difficult diagnosis and a potentially simple repair that was nice and short and sweet guys definitely find your closest repair cafe Rose i think definitely definitely worth trying 100 percent i'm so impressed guy that was really good normally if i'm biting my tongue if i know what i know well done it could have been a very very elaborate answer exactly you go that's totally what i was expecting that's where i've got 10 questions that i want to ask Rose and i just i'm really holding them in and it's not easy you can have a separate chat on that anyway um and um this kind of leads on to that question i think this was probably just because at the start i said something about switching my fare phone off but someone was asking why is the take-up a fare phone being so low in the UK this hasn't been an issue in Germany so i was just thinking in the sense of that question obviously for those of you who don't know a fare phone is sort of seen as a very repairable thing it's very modular so the whole sort of beauty of it is that you can repair it a lot more simply so i you go i don't know if you have any inside knowledge what's why why are we a bit behind on that sort of lovely repairable okay um so uh one one thing to keep in mind and um that just in terms of the size of markets it's important well we see fare phone is doing a fantastic job of creating awareness about how it's possible to make repairable products in terms of commercial success it is limited like across the whole of Europe they've sold a few hundred thousand devices over the years so every year in Europe there are over 200 million smartphones sold so it's it's they are extremely popular across the type of people that will go to repair cafes and that are very environmentally conscious but in terms of numbers they've sold and they've influenced the market at a very small level like they've made it the case for products to be repairable and that's the most important aspect of their work in a sense more so than the product itself um so i think this is important just to see like how why is it that we want the right to repair in legislation because we want every phone to be as repairable as a fare phone not just the zero point something percent of the phones that are bought every year and and i'll just plug in there i'll put a link later the european wide campaign that we have ongoing with right to repair at the moment which is that for a phone that will last 10 years and you'll find a letter and a funny fake product launch link to this which is well i'll share the link on the on the chat but i think that one of the reasons that fare phone has sold more in germany compared to the uk is that in germany they've had a partnership with one of the mobile operators which has made them visible in a lot more shops compared to the uk where they only had a connection with the phone call which has some visibility online but doesn't really appear in that many stores and also germany historically people are very much more previously focused and fare phone did come up with a version that wouldn't run the full google version of android which means a version without a lot of the data tracking which is linked to using your phone with a google account so that appeal to people in germany possibly more than in the uk thank you there now i'm conscious of time i think we've pretty much got through all the questions that are on there um and i know someone's just asked for a list and talk it there's a couple of things in a couple of suggestions from people and some links about that um so i thought maybe just to finish off um i would just share let's see if i can do this share my screen with just some of the sort of things that we've sort of suggest um can i oh no don't get up far just sort of things the sort of calls to action the suggestions that we've covered off today um and they're sort of different activities based i suppose depend on where where you are tonight and how you've joined us so the first thing is you know if you're an individual one of the things that we'd really like you to do which uggo mentioned is helpers call on government policy makers with this right to repair now all these things that we've talked about are sort of actions and things that you can get involved with we will send out an email next week with a link to this recording as well so that you can share it with people listen to elements of it again and also it will include these sort of links as well so don't worry about having to jot them down now but there's certainly you know this is the the petition and i'll also include that link that uggo's just mentioned about the um 10-year phone uh the other thing is if you're an individual you know support your local repair cafe so if you need something fixed um there are a couple of places you can look there's the repair cafe foundation website and there's also the restart projects and between them they cover a lot of the repair cafes and restart projects that already exist in the UK so you can find it somewhere and check obviously if they're open at the minute and what their current way of working is so get along and take your broken things along to them if you are already involved in a repair cafe one thing that we'd really love everyone to consider if you don't already is um collecting data because all the data that we collect really helps in the arguments the discussions that people like uggo are involved with with policy makers so the data that actually says you know what things we fix what things we haven't fixed and without the things that we we don't fix you know is it uh because we're lacking in spare parts is it that you just can't even get into the blasted thing um and then that really helps when talking with companies as well who say oh you know these things never go wrong and actually we can look at that and there are two different places that you can potentially put that data within repair monitor that's part of the repair cafe foundation or within the fixometer but restart restart project does just to say both those places lead to the same place so you don't have to enter in both so pick one if you collect data um well I was going to say if right before I move into this one as well if you are part of a repair group the other thing is that you could um sign the match to declaration which is a declaration really asking our policy makers and government to change things and it's really great if you can get your MPs to also sign up to that and that just again kind of increases the the weight that we've got behind this campaign um if you're also part of a repair group and you'd like to connect and sort of go that bit further we've mentioned tonight that we're part of the community repair network and that is a really new thing um we've just sort of come together and this is the new website that launched I think it's only last week or so with the community repair network.org.uk and you can look on that and we will we're planning to have an event in the next month or so where people um can come and hear a bit about what we've been doing so far and um see if they'd like to get involved and there's really if you want to get involved in sort of doing more so it's not about just um setting up repair cafes and community repair places it's about how as a together as a voice we can make more of a difference but what I'd say is if you'd like to be um find out more about that if you want to just drop me an email that I'll make sure that when we have that planned I will let you know and the other thing is if you're interested in setting up a repair cafe the best advice I can give you is to get along find your nearest existing one if you're thinking of setting one up find out what the ones are that are in your county or neighbouring counties and get in touch with them because we're all really really happy to be you know sharing sharing the love of this so um you can look on this website to see sort of who's currently involved in that network to get an idea of who it might be but equally look on um the places I've already mentioned where you can find existing repair cafes and um get along and they'll they'll share we're really good at all sharing you know what we've done an experience and you can kind of pick what's right for your community and um they'll always be there'll always be questions that we can't answer but between us um you know can help and we'll be able to hopefully get you on your way um I think that's pretty much it I would say thank you so much for joining us on this Friday evening if we could all be in a lovely room or you know sharing a drink at the end of this it would be joyous but it's been great to see you from so many different parts of the country we really hope it's been useful and um thank you to all of you guys who have been part of the panel and speaking as well this evening and um as I say we will drop an email out to everyone next week so um if you've got any questions feel free to contact us by email as well and we'll be able to help and we are officially the last event of Epical Consumer Week so we should sign off on their behalf as well uh feel free to unmute say bye but otherwise um that's us for this evening thank you very much