Host a Repair Café in Your Library

Learn how your library can host a Repair Café (or fixit-clinic, fixit-fair, or other community repair event). Public libraries and Repair Cafés are natural allies and together can foster a culture of repair, reuse, and resourcefulness while strengthening community.

In this webinar you'll learn what a Repair Café is and how to start one, including recruiting volunteers, ensuring you have necessary supplies, and promoting and managing your event. The presenters will also share insights, strategies, and best practices for establishing and nurturing a Repair Café in your library, using our own events to demonstrate what to do (and what not to do!).

Learning Outcomes

At the conclusion of this webinar, participants will be able to:

• Understand the history of Repair Cafés;
• Gather the resources needed to hold a Repair Café; and
• Host their own Repair Café.

Who Should Attend

This webinar is intended for all public library staff who develop or offer programs.

Presenters

Larissa Brookes (she/her) is a librarian at the Ridgewood Public Library in Ridgewood, NJ. She has hosted the Ridgewood Repair Café since 2018, first at the local high school and ever since at the public library. Larissa cofounded Repair Café Garden State, a group dedicated to fostering the New Jersey Repair Café movement. She is also president of the NJ Library Association Sustainability and Resilience Section and a member of the Sustainability Round Table Public Advocacy & Awareness Committee.

Gabrielle Griffis (she/her) works as a youth services librarian at Brewster Ladies' Library in Brewster, MA. She has been coordinating and advocating for repair events in libraries since 2018. Her writing on this topic appears in Repair Revolution: How Fixers are Transforming Our Throwaway Culture, Libraries and Sustainability: Programs and Practices for Community Impact, and 25 Ready-to-Use Sustainable Living Library Programs, as well as How Public Libraries Build Sustainable Communities in the 21st Century.  She is a co-founder and leading member of the Blue Marble Librarians, a Massachusetts-based group of librarians who work on helping libraries create climate resilience in their communities. Learn more at gabriellegriffis.com.

Elizabeth Knight (she/her) is a long-time sustainability activist, community organizer, and author, having co-written Repair Revolution: How Fixers Are Transforming Our Throwaway Culture with her fellow sustainability and repair advocate, the late John Wackman. In 2016, Elizabeth started Orange County New York's first Repair Café, which serves people from New York and New Jersey. She moved to Jersey City in 2023 and, of course, promptly started the Jersey City Repair Café, which meets bimonthly. Elizabeth is a frequent speaker on the repair movement and was interviewed on NBC's TODAY in April, when the morning show hosted a massive Repair Café in Rockefeller Center.

Important Registration Information

An ALA eLearning account is required to register. If you don't have an account you will need to create one in order to participate in this webinar. No membership is required to create the account.

Registrants will receive access information prior to the start date of the webinar.

CALL Training Partner for this Event: American Library Association