Café kaputt – repair café and educational project
What is Café kaputt?
Café kaputt is a repair café, educational project and meeting place for everyone. It’s all about repairing things together.
We offer help, as well as tools, materials and even some spare parts for the repairs of your everyday things.
Our opening hours
In Café kaputt you can learn how to fix your clothes, textiles, shoes, furniture, electrical appliances, toys, etc. Our expert volunteers, with repair skills in different kinds of fields, are here to guide you through the repair-process as much as needed. Our variety of fields creates an ongoing learning process for everybody involved.
Choose the right opening hours according to what you want to fix:
Electrical: Tuesdays 4 – 8 pm and Wednesday 4 – 8 pm
DIY handwork: Tuesdays 6 – 8 pm
Textiles: Thursdays 4 – 6 pm
Just drop by and fix your things!
Café kaputt is open for everyone and on donation basis. Depending on your possibilities, please donate so that we can pay for tools, materials, drinks and rent.
Enjoy and get inspired
If you have nothing to repair, you can enjoy a cup of tea or coffee and a conversation here, too.
Or you can lend a hand to someone else’s repair job and become a helper at Café kaputt. You can also get inspired at the reading table by looking through our books and leaflets on repairs, DIY and/or changing the world to be a better, more sustainable place for all.
The idea is to create a common open space based on mutual empowerment:
Meet up in Café kaputt for repairing, building and supporting each other – sharing ideas as well as knowledge. Learn how to repair things and/or offer your skills to help others.
How to find us
Café kaputt is situated in Leipzig, Lindenau in the rear building of
Merseburger Straße 102
04177 Leipzig
You can get to us by tram number 7 or bus number 131.
Get off at the stop called
„Georg-Schwarz-Straße / Merseburger Straße“
Why fix your things in Café kaputt?
We, people living in the global north, throw away too much. Can you imagine? The pile of electronic waste per year of one person in Germany is about 23 kg! Even things that only have little defaults which could easily be fixed, are often dumped.
Even when we want to fix and keep things, we often lack knowledge on how to repair them (or even find the problem) or we don’t have the right tools at home to do so. Knowing how to fix is a skill almost lost in our society.
The repair café movement that Café kaputt is part of, wants to change that. We want to see the valuable practice and knowledge of repairing things kept, passed on and even grow. We want us all to be able to acquire that knowledge – regardless of our income or educational background. We want everybody to be able to experience how great and empowering it feels to be able to fix and sustain everyday items and possessions instead of throwing them away. And of course, how much fun it is, to learn these skills from and with one another.
By repairing, you connect to your things and the value inside. It saves you money and enhances your skills.
At the same time, it reduces the volume of resources and energy needed to make new products and thus cuts CO2 emissions caused by manufacturing, recycling and the whole cycle of consumption.
As a repair café it is our aim to give you a glimpse of a world we could create together, a postgrowth or reduction society, in which we work together for the common goal of global fairness and ecological sustainability.
We are looking forward to repair with you at Café kaputt!