Year: 2025 - 2026

Partners: Creative Spark CLG, Ireland, Buinho Associação, Portugal, Colab House, Greece

The project Repower - Right to repair through citizen empowerment explores Repair Cafes as a tool that can bring social change and inclusion, lifelong learning opportunities, in addition to their environmental impact. The project focuses on the social inclusion and intergenerational exchange, activation and operation of Repair Cafes in different geographical and cultural set-ups, as well as how to successfully communicate Repair Cafes in order to attract, empower and retain vulnerable groups and volunteers and local citizens as participants.

Through 3 activities: Enhancing the Human Dimension in Repair Cafés, Verifying the Operational Aspect of Repair Cafes and Developing the Communication Aspect of Repair Cafes the partners created an all-encompassing Toolkit for organizations that are interested in engaging socially vulnerable persons in repairing activities. It was done through participatory action-based co-design sessions, and putting the Toolkit in practice by organizing Repair Cafes in 4 different contexts and locations.

In Barcelona, in order to ground the initiative in the realities of the local ecosystem in Barcelona, two participatory sessions were organized in 2025: one during the 13th Gathering of ENSEMBLE -
the Network of Productive and Collaborative Spaces at Akasha Hub , and a second one at TransfoLAB BCN with the non-formal textile collective Entre Mujeres and other interested participants. These two contexts provided complementary perspectives. On the one hand, established productive spaces contributed insights related to infrastructure, organization, and network capacity. On the other, the Entre Mujeres group brought grassroots, community-oriented perspective, strongly rooted in care practices, textile repair, and collective empowerment. Together, these inputs allow for a more holistic understanding of how Repair Cafés can be implemented locally.

The verification of the operational aspect of Repair Cafés was done through 8 repair activities in different contexts in Barcelona. Four were performed inhouse, at the premises of TransfoLAB BCN, in collaboration with different volunteer based groups such as Restarters BCN, Entre Mujeres y En bici sense edat. Each sessión was focused on different type of objects: small furniture and decorative objects, electrical aplliances, clothes and bicycles. In order to reach more disadvantaged population, we organized 3 sesions at the neighborhoud Ciutat Meridiana on the outskirts of Barcelona, in colaboration with the public fablab Ateneu de Fabricació de Ciutat Meridiana and their volonteers. The sesions were focused of repair of electrical tools, electronics and clothes. Finaly, a repair sesion dedicated to electrical appliances from the kitchen from the Gastronomic Institute of Barcelona was performed together with a group of students at risk of early school abandoment. This activity was part of the European Week for Waste Prevention.

The final dissemination event was part of our semestral event TrashTalks on the topic of Repairing Communities . The event brought together diverse local initiatives to explore repair as a driver of social change, inclusion, and intergenerational connection through practical experiences in different contexts. The event featured Project ReBorn, led by Simon Smith, a creative community in El Born promoting eco-conscious design and upcycling within a collaborative space; Millor que Nou, represented by Norma Rey Garcia, an initiative of the AMB that encourages repair by providing tools, space, and knowledge to help reduce waste; Swap., led by Wara Fabiani, which organizes clothing exchange events that combine sustainability, community building, and new ways of connecting; and OpenArt that shared how Repair Café Barcelona operates.

Erasmus+ KA2 Small scale partnership. The project is supported by: