International Repair Day is a joint initiative of the Open Repair Alliance, celebrated every year on the third Saturday of October.
This year, Repair Day falls on Saturday the 19th of October, which is also in the week celebrating the 10th anniversary of the first Repair Cafe!
In homage to Greta Thunberg and the student climate strikers, this year’s edition will focus on the need to repair for the climate and for the future. Save the date and start considering how you might participate in International Repair Day 2019.
We will publish materials for this year’s edition in coming weeks. In the mean time, here are the resources we created for 2018, including a map of the over 150 events that celebrated Repair Day around the world
We want to make repair as visible as possible. This day highlights the value of repair and promotes global community efforts to fix the stuff we own.
There are many things you can do to celebrate International Repair Day: from attempting to fix something yourself to dropping by a local shop and get your devices back to life. We want everyone to take pride in fixing their things, and to motivate fixers – enthusiasts and professionals – to share their repair skills and get others involved.
During the first two editions of Repair Day, we witnessed great interest and sharing through social media, where people posted their repair events and stories, and we heard from fixers and community repair events across the world, from the UK to Spain, Iran, Argentina or the US. In 2018, the focus was on #RighttoRepair, with increased interest from the global press and from independent repairers.
International Repair Day also presents an opportunity to further promote community repair events globally: motivating active groups, encouraging new ones to emerge, and inspiring citizens to share their skills as volunteers.
Beyond repairing in the community, this day can help independent repair shops promote their work, and also inspire companies to show support for repair, sharing information, tools or spare parts.