Camden Fixing Factory is open!
Today, our second Fixing Factory has opened on Queen's Crescent in Camden which aims to reinvigorate the high street and tackle e-waste. The Camden Fixing Factory will act as a community repair hub, allowing local residents to get appliances fixed, learn valuable repair skills from our volunteer fixers, and take part in weekly repair workshops.
What is the Fixing Factory?
The Camden Fixing Factory is a community repair hub that will allow local people to resist throwing away household appliances and needlessly buying new goods which are often expensive and environmentally damaging while also providing a much-needed service and helping with the cost of living crisis.
It will also provide learning opportunities for local residents so they can repair appliances themselves, hoping to build sustainable thinking and practices into everyday routines.
The Fixing Factory will be reaching out to local repair businesses in order to foster a repair ecosystem - meaning people can access high-quality fixers and those repair businesses can flourish from the accumulating interest in getting their appliances fixed.
Why fix things?
Repairing, reusing and recycling is going to be a vital tool in addressing climate change as electronics generate roughly 3.7% of global greenhouse emissions. Centres dedicated to repair practices, like the Fixing Factory in Queen’s Crescent, create up to ten times the jobs compared to those disposal sites. 80% of all broken electricals could actually be repaired at community events, with the help of volunteers.
The level of community interest we’ve seen already has been huge. With this project, not only can we start reducing e-waste on a local level, we can start building a culture where people see the opportunities of keeping appliances going rather than trading them in for a newer model.
The inaugural Fixing Factory which opened in Brent earlier this year also addressese the “digital divide” (the unequal access to digital technology) by repairing the broken laptops, desktops, and tablets of local residents to then give them to those in the community that need them most.
Today the Camden Fixing Factory was officially opened after Camden Mayor, Nasim Ali, cut the ribbon. There were also a number of other local politicians as well as representatives from a number of local stakeholders and community groups there to celebrate the grand opening of the Queen’s Crescent Fixing Factory, and take part in some hands-on fixing.
Fixing Factories is a co-production with the Restart Project, and training partners Mer-IT. Fixing Factories is funded by the National Lottery Climate Action Fund and CAST. The West London Waste Authority are also partners on the Fixing Factory in Brent. Camden Council supported the Queen’s Crescent Fixing Factory in finding its location.