Repair Fair

The Repair Fair is a free, family-friendly community event where residents can learn basic mending skills, have minor repairs made on their items, and build a culture of repair in Addison County! 

On behalf of all of us at ACSWMD, we want to thank all the volunteers and attendees who came to our most recent Repair Fair, the Addison County Closet Cleanup, which focused entirely on keeping clothes, accessories, and jewelry out of the landfill. On Feb 25th, participants spent the day with us, having items mended and swapping usable clothes with their friends and neighbors. To hear more about future fairs and events, follow us on social media or check our news page. We'll see you then! 

ACSWMD's Repair Fair is based on the idea of a "Repair Café," which originated in Amsterdam in 2009 by a sustainability advocate named Martine Postma. After the successful implementation of several Repair Cafés in her area, Postma founded the Repair Café Foundation in 2010, to spread the idea and share resources throughout the globe. Since then, over 30 countries have joined the movement and over 1,400 Repair Cafés have been established.

The three fundamental objectives of the Repair Café Foundation are:

• To promote the lost art of repair in modern communities
• To learn and teach repair skills and information
• To cultivate social cohesion by gathering a diverse group of community members and encouraging them to work together to meet each other’s needs

ACSWMD's first repair event was held in June 2018 at Middlebury Union High School. The second Repair Fair organized by ACSWMD was held on February 2019 at the Hannaford Career Center in Middlebury, with the third not long after in November of 2019. The fourth Repair Fair occurred in March 2022 at the Hannaford Career Center's Makery. The fifth was at the Bixby Library in Vergennes and was entirely clothing & textile focused.