Workshop: Repair Cafe

It used to be that people prided themselves on their ability to repair, re-use and repurpose the things they owned. Since WWII, we’ve embraced a wasteful, throwaway culture that thrives on consumerism. But convenience is not sustainable, and we’re seeing growing support for Maker Spaces, Fixit Clinics, and Repair Cafes. These are public gathering spaces where people are feeding their curiosity about how things work, pooling resources, and sharing skills to extend the life of the things they own, reducing waste, making friends, and having fun while strengthening community connections.

Join Galen Meyers and Elizabeth Knight, Repair Cafe organizer and co-author of Repair Revolution-How Fixers Are Transforming Our Throwaway Culture, to learn how you can participate in a powerful community response to fix a broken world – right at home!

This workshop is being offered as part of the 2021 Regenerative Communities Summit. Please click here to learn more and register using our pay-what-you-can donation-based system to participate.

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Speakers: 

Elizabeth Knight, retired marketing and promotion executive became a sustainability activist when she discovered that Orange County, NY hadn’t had a Recycling Coordinator for more than 12 years. For nearly 2 years, she and her husband lobbied county legislators who finally re-funded the position in 2016. That same year she started her County’s first Repair Cafe – today, it enjoys the support of 30 volunteers from 9 different towns and attracts visitors from 13-19 towns in 3 states. Her team has received certificates of appreciation from county, town, and village officials. 

In October 2018, she organized a pop-up Repair Cafe at the international Reuse Conex convention held in Cincinnati, Ohio, where Martine Postma, founder of Repair Café International, was the keynote speaker. 

Based on the follow-up reports that Elizabeth wrote to volunteers and RC sponsors/supporters, after every one of Warwick’s Repair Cafés, John Wackman, who founded the first Repair Cafe in N.Y. state, invited her to co-author Repair Revolution – How Fixers Are Transforming Our Throwaway Culture, https://www.repaircafeusa.org/repair-revolution-book. Their book was published by New World Library in 2020. 

Dismayed by the number of useful goods kicked to the curb for the Village of Warwick’s annual bulk trash pickup, and to celebrate Earth Day, Elizabeth founded Too Good Toss, an annual free community swap visited by hundreds of people.

Galen Meyers is a passionate advocate for weaving “Maker” and “Regenerative” communities together. Galen studied physics, math, and biology at Colorado State University, and he is a certified permaculture designer and group facilitator. He worked for a year and a half at a 3d-printer manufacturing company building, operating, maintaining, and providing tech support for the “LULZBOT” brand 3d-printers – well known in the maker community as very high-quality consumer-grade 3d-printers and an entirely “open-source” brand. He has been involved in Makerspaces, Maker communities, and permaculture communities in both Colorado and Florida, and is an active organizer in the Transition movement at the national and international levels. Galen is also the lead tech facilitator for the 2021 Regenerative Communities Summit.