More Fixing Factories opening soon!
Today, we are celebrating news that The National Lottery Community Fund* has awarded us over £1m to scale up our Fixing Factory projects!
Back in 2019 Fixing Factories were just a dream. We shared our vision that every high street in the UK should have a space where people can bring in broken electronics and appliances to be fixed for free, while gaining the skills they need to give it a go themselves in the future.
Since then, Fixing Factories have become something tangible, popular and effective. In 2022 we teamed up with The Restart Project to launch our Camden and Brent pilot Fixing Factories, and the past couple of years have seen us working together to trial and test this model for tackling e-waste.
They’ve been a huge success - over a thousand people have got involved with community repair sessions at our Fixing Factories, and by fixing up hundreds of items that were otherwise destined for the e-waste, we’ve saved 53,000kg of harmful carbon emissions.
Together, we’ve proven that Fixing Factories should be on high streets up and down the country.
Thanks to the success of our pilot Fixing Factories, the National Lottery Community Fund as awarded us a grant of £1.27m. We’ll use this grant to open three new permanent Fixing Factories in London, and run a host of training opportunities and activities including community repair sessions, Repair Clubs, Fixperience workshops and upskilling programmes.
And we won’t stop there. Our funding for the next three years is focussed on establishing more sites around London, but once these are up and running, we’ll be in a good position to inspire funders to support more Fixing Factories across the country. Watch this space!
Thank you to all of you who have supported our Fixing Factory vision so far, and for the players of the National Lottery, who have made this new grant funding possible!
*Thanks to the support of National Lottery players, the National Lottery Community Fund distributes over £600 million in grant funding each year to support activities that create resilient communities that are more inclusive and environmentally sustainable and that will strengthen society and improve lives across the UK.