About - Repair Cafe NI

About Us

What is a Repair Cafe?

Repair Cafes are pop up community events where handy volunteers give your broken items a new lease of life. Together, we are cutting waste, sharing skills and building community. We would love you to be part of it – find your local repair cafe to get something fix or volunteer, see upcoming events, start a new repair cafe or explore why repair matters below.

About Repair Cafe NI

Repair Cafe NI is a network of locally-rooted, volunteer-powered, community repair groups across Northern Ireland. Each is independent and organised by local people. Repair Cafe NI supports and connects these groups so we can collaborate, support each other and share learning. We also connect with repair movements across the UK, Ireland and beyond, and work to raise the profile of repair.

News report on repair cafes produced and broadcast by ITV News in October 2025. See more here

Our Story

The first repair cafe in Northern Ireland took place in Belfast on 9 December 2017 at Farset Labs maker space. We’d never met before, had no funding or premises and had never been to a repair cafe. But we loved the idea and saw its potential to bring people together to reduce needless waste, help people save cash and share repair skills.

More than 40 people joined that first lively event, with everything from bikes to a talking Elmo, a toaster, a lamp and a pair of light up shoes. After this, a group formed to start running regular events around Belfast and formed a Community Interest Company.

In 2019, we were asked to help a new repair cafe form in Antrim and Newtownabbey, and worked with members of the local community to share what had been learnt so far. Soon groups in South Down and Laurencetown emerged, and by 2024, we had helped 12 groups establish local repair cafes from Derry to Down, Portstewart to Bangor.

By 2023, these groups realised there was lots more interest in starting repair projects, and much more we could do together, if we had more capacity to support each other. We were awarded funding by The National Lottery Community Fund’s People & Communities Fund for 3 years, beginning in March 2025, to support a grassroots network of community repair groups and help new communities start their repair journey.

Why Repair?

Fixing household items keeps them working for longer. This has huge benefits for people and planet: saving money, restoring cherished things, cutting needless waste, energy and materials needed to make new items.

The way we produce, consume and dispose of clothes, electricals, household items and other stuff is driving the climate crisis – but community repair projects help people do something positive and practical to respond. They bring people together to share skills and knowledge and make our community better connected and more resilient.

Who we are

Network Weavers

Chris organised the first repair cafe to take place in Northern Ireland in 2017 as a founder of Repair Cafe Belfast and has been helping communities to start their own repair cafes since 2019. She is motivated by the power of people to come together and take positive and practical action to help each other – and by a family that’s constantly breaking things!

“Fixing something feels amazing. When you look around a repair cafe, you see a bit of community magic happening. Lamps, trousers and bikes getting restored, but more than that: people telling their stories, spending time together, weaving new connections that make our communities stronger.”

Her background is in journalism, advocacy and campaigning. For three years, she led communications for national charity Transition Together and is passionate about the power of communities to lead change and respond to the biggest challenges of our time.

Marcella has been a dedicated volunteer and core team member of Repair Cafe Foyle since the very beginning, playing a key role in getting it off the ground and helping to organise the monthly events. Through her work with ZeroWaste NorthWest and Repair&Share Foyle, she has supported a wide range of community initiatives and workshops, from textile upcycling to filmmaking and storytelling – Unravelled. The Story of a Jumper with the Derry Playhouse.

Involved in activism since a young age. Marcella has been an advocate for Amnesty International Italia for many years before going abroad. That sense of justice for rights has always been reflected in her work, and now, as well, when advocating for the right to repair.

Marcella is deeply passionate about her role as Network Weaver for Repair Cafe Northern Ireland and is excited to see the network of repair cafes across Northern Ireland continue to grow and strengthen.

“One of the most exciting parts of my job is visiting new places across Northern Ireland and discovering such an incredible sense of community. The enthusiasm and engagement I find almost makes this job feel easy!

Board Members

Lee is Chair and co-founder of Repair Cafe Northern Ireland. Along with Chris McCartney, she played a key role in establishing Repair Cafe Belfast and helping to develop new repair cafes across Northern Ireland.

Lee has also established a number of organisations in her hometown of Carrickfergus – Positive Carrickfergus and Carrick Greengrocers.

Lee is interested in the practice of systems change particularly in terms of place-based change and as well as the heart-swelling work of helping to run a repair cafe on a Saturday morning, she has loved getting out into other communities, sharing the repair cafe Northern Ireland ethos and helping to build a network of community based repair cafes that demonstrate the power of community to change the world.