A highlight of our Repair Fest 2021 is a photography exhibition offering a window into a selection of local businesses in the community where you can get items, fixed, stitched, welded, and repaired. By changing the habit of throwing things out, and by choosing to repair we save money and reduce the amount of waste going to landfill.
We invited local photographers to join us in celebrating all the fantastic individuals and businesses in the area that mend and repair.
The exhibition will appear in Tooting Market from November 2021.
View all the images and read more about our fantastic local fixers and repairers 👇
We had a very successful time at our October Restart workshop – we started out with only three fixers but two people who came with things to mend joined in and started helping others! Thanks Shazia and Hitha!
Restart Parties are a community self-repair space where you take responsibility for your own gadgets and data, so please don’t forget to take any back-ups beforehand, if relevant – and if possible arrive during the first two hours to allow time for fixing! More info about Restart including details of regular skillshares at www,therestartproject.org
Our next Restart Party will be in March – follow us on Facebook or Twitter @tttooting for more information or sign up for our regular newsletter on the main page of this website.
Our aims are to celebrate local fixing and mending wherever it is happening, promote local repair businesses and support sharing and repairing events building on our pre-covid Restart/Sewstart sessions.
Our first activity, as we emerged from lockdown in early July, was to stage the first ever Tooting Repair Week! We received funding for the project from the national Transition Bounce Forward programme and we’re were thrilled to team up with Jeni and Gemma atMeet & Make Spaces who co-ordinated the programme of events. We were particularly grateful for our many collaborators and supporters including Tooting Market, Mushkil Aasaan, BJ Hardware, Oasis Charity Shops, Woodfield Pavilion, Mrs Trindle and Furzedown Primary School.
We hosted the first in-person Restart Party in London in 18 months! With 5 fixers we tackled over 20 fixes ranging from a toy to a coffee machine, a food processor to a shower radio. We were also joined by two representatives of Glen Dimplex Consumer Products (brands including Roberts Radio and Morphy Richards) who are exploring how they can build products that last better and are more repairable. Our next Restart party will be on 30th October.
Our final session was an online Green Drinks session focused on how we can be more sustainable with our stuff and do more locally to limit waste. We heard from Joe Duggan of the fantastic Library of Things who are on a mission to make borrowing better than buying – for people & planet (They’ve recently opened up in Merton – how about a Tooting branch?) and Ian Mather from Restart Project who help people learn how to repair broken electronics and rethink how they consume them in the first place. WATCH A RECORDING of the session here.
What’s next?
Coming up in the Autumn is Tooting RepairFest from 23 – 31st October and an exhibition of local photography celebrating the expertise of our local fixers and menders!
Let’s make Tooting a hub of sharing, fixing and mending!
Celebrating repairing, fixing and making in our local community – read all about our different activities.
Repair and mending sessions
Fun and free events where you learn how to fix and take back control of your electricals: Slow or damaged laptops, smartphones, radios, kettles and many of your other favourite devices can often be put right so “don’t despair, just repair”. Buttons missing from your shirts? Holes in your jumpers? Bring your repair and stitching projects along to the sewing table. Join with others and do your mending, sewing, knitting and crochet in company – with skills sharing if you’d like it (for fuller details of upcoming sessions see our Facebook page)
UPCOMING SESSIONS – all 13.00 – 16.00 hrs
Sat 1 November 2025 – Tooting (United Reform Church, Rookstone Rd, London SW17 9NQ)
Sat 10 January 2026 – Balham (St Mary’s Church, Balham High Rd, London SW12 9BS)
Sat 7 March 2026 – Tooting (United Reform Church, Rookstone Rd, London SW17 9NQ)
Sat 2 May 2026 – Balham (St Mary’s Church, Balham High Rd, London SW12 9BS)
Sat 4 July 2026 – Tooting (United Reform Church, Rookstone Rd, London SW17 9NQ)
Sat 12 September 2026 – Balham – Green Fair at (St Mary’s Church, Balham High Rd, London SW12 9BS)
Sat 7 November 2026 – Tooting (United Reform Church, Rookstone Rd, London SW17 9NQ)
Tooting Repair Club
Repair Club is a group of like-minded local people who meet regularly in Tooting to share and develop repair skills and fix stuff, in a social setting. If you’re already a keen fixer, or an interested beginner who would like to develop your skills, everyone is most welcome!
For more information and news including dates of regular open sessions contact info@repairclub.org
Tooting and Balham repair Maps
The map shows local repair businesses in purple and venues for the 2021 Tooting Repairfest in yellow. Click on the location pointers for more info. If you have a business you would like to add to the map email us details at transitiontowntooting@gmail.com
Below is a Sustainability map created by Neighbourhood Network SW12 & SW17 which lists all the places you can reuse, refill, recycle and repair things in the local area.
Photography Exhibition at Tooting Market – more HERE
Sewing Box workshop with CARAS Women’s Group – more HERE
Collaborative Protest Coat – Repair for our Future and Fix Your Knitwear – darning workshop at the Woodfield Pavilion’s Big Green Weekend
Our First Ever Repair Week in July 2021 – more HERE
Help us by…..
Sharing details with us of any local businesses that do repair, fixing, mending or alterations – this could include working with electrical or electronic goods, furniture, clothes, leather goods, upholstery – and more…
Letting us know if you have fixing or mending skills which you’d be happy to share with the community through this group – or you know someone who does….
Telling us if you have something to offer the Share & Repair community – space, materials, tools or other skills like project planning, communications, social media, photography – anything which might help us build our work.
Do you have electrical or electronic items that you don’t want to throw away? Or a sewing machine that is broken or you’re not sure how to use?
Have a favourite piece of clothing that needs mending or altering and you’d like to learn how?
Or simply good at fixing and mending stuff? Maybe you just fancy a cup of tea, a piece of cake and a chance to find out more about Transition Tooting and what we get up to?
Come and join our next fixing and mending workshop on
If you can’t make it in April put these dates in your diary for future events… Wed 19th July – 6.30 – 9.00pm Sat 21st October – 2.00 – 5.00pm
(Restart Parties are a community self-repair space where you take responsibility for your own gadgets and data, so please don’t forget to take any back-ups beforehand, if relevant – and if possible arrive during the first two hours to allow time for fixing! More info about Restart including details of regular skillshares at www,therestartproject.org)
