Some of Central Arkansas's handiest people will gather at the Southwest Community Center in Little Rock this Sunday for International Repair Day.
The event extends the Dee Brown Library’s monthly repair cafe, with on-site experts ready to fix your broken items and teach essential repair skills anyone can learn.
Ray Partridge is the City of Little Rock's recycling and sustainability educator. She says the event is about building skills, living sustainably, and keeping items out of landfills.
"There's a phrase in the kind of repair movement that, if you can't fix it, you don't actually own it. You have to have somebody else maybe fix it, you have to pay them, you have to go to maybe a specific place or a specific company, so it can be really limiting in terms of what control we actually have over the stuff we quote/unquote own.”
Partridge says this Sunday’s event is one of only two in the Southeast, with the other in Memphis. She says Little Rock’s Repair Cafe is one of the country's most active.
"They do these repair cafes monthly out of Dee Brown Library," says Partridge. "I want to say they have around an 80% success rate with their repairs. It is their regular repair cafe day, but we're making it a little bit bigger because of the international aspect."
The event includes on-site experts ready to fix broken items, educational workshops, and a swap meet where locals can share items they no longer need.
Partridge says they are accepting items large and small, as long as they can fit through the community center door.
"Bring a few items to donate, things that are in good condition that can still be used. ...Even if folks don't have anything to give right now, they are welcome to bring a bag or a box, and explore what others have brought and take whatever they need. It's all free. "
A documentary will also screen at 2 PM about the rise of disposability culture and the possible motivations driving it.
"The documentary is called 'Buy Now: the Shopping Conspiracy,' and it's a little controversial because it has the word 'conspiracy' in the title, but it's basically about overconsumption, planned obsolescence, which is where companies design products to basically have an expiration date, and marketing, the push of some of these big companies to push people to buy more."
Little Rock’s Repair Day is this Sunday, October 18, from 11 AM to 4 PM, at the Southwest Community Center on Baseline Road.
It is a collaboration between the Central Arkansas Repair Cafe, The Green Corner Store, and the Little Rock Sustainability Office. More information at Sustain Little Rock on Facebook.
