Newhaven Green Centre

As local residents we wanted to find a way to contribute to and strengthen the local community. We were aware of Brighton Green Centre and Freegle as well as the growing movement to form local Repair Cafes and Library of Things.

As with many projects, lockdown gave us the time and space to start putting this idea into action. We talked informally with local groups doing similar things to get advice including SEA (Seaford Environmental Alliance), Brighton Green Centre.

And In January 2021 we coordinated a large zoom meeting with the above groups and also SCDA (the Sussex Community Development Association), Havens Hub, Go Local (who run the Lewes Repair Cafes and Library of Things), Greenhavens, as well as local councillors in order to introduce what we were planning and checking we weren’t duplicating what other local groups were up to.

We formed a small committee and became constituted. Our main aims were always to help people to reduce waste and consumption and save money through promoting sharing, repairing, recycling and reusing things.

We applied to become a CIO (Charitable Incorporated Organisation) but were unfortunately turned down for this so instead we formed a CIC (Community Interest Company) and opened a bank account. Then in December 2021 there was a large Crowdfunder campaign in which East Sussex County Council was offering match funding up to £5000, so £10,000 in total. This would enable us to find rent for premises for one year which would help to make people aware of what we’re up to and make us accessible on Newhaven High Street. We were overwhelmed with the positive response and met our target. (Sadly we couldn’t easily find suitable available premises but this funding has helped us to cover the rent on our storage.)

Following this we were successful with other funding applications including the Making it Happen scheme, as well as grants from Newhaven Town Council and Sussex Community Foundation. This enabled us to buy equipment to stock our Library of Things and start publicising what we were offering. At the same time we were in discussion with East Sussex Libraries with a view to holding a weekly stall at Newhaven Library on a Thursday. This would coincide with the street market and weekly ‘Rhymetime’ at the library, meaning footfall in the town was higher on those days. Having a weekly stall would enable us to start up a ‘freegle’ or ‘bring-and-take’ table, encouraging people not to throw away unwanted items which still had life left in them, instead to give them to us for other people to take. And we gave advice about recycling and were able to collect some things which couldn’t be recycled including unwanted corks, blister packs, candle wax and hard plastics – at one point collecting blister packs drew lots of people to us but thankfully now Boots offers this service.

We were keen to get the Library of Things on the map but took advice from Tony who runs Go Local in Lewes to start with running a Repair Cafe as doing a specific event was more likely to attract more people. We went to the Seaford Repair Cafe to get an idea how they ran it.

So in March 2022 we opened our doors for the first time, at Meeching Hall with a couple of friends who were quite handy to help. At our first Repair Cafe we had X visitors and did Y repairs. We declared it a success, not least because it felt such a positive experience. Since then the Repair Cafes have become a monthly fixture (with breaks in August and sometimes December) and we typically undertake around 30 repairs each month.

Over the months we’ve had many repairers turn up and offer their services – most of whom have stayed with us so on a good month we have as many as 10 repairers.

As we built up our stock for our Library of Things we started renting a space from Storage Mart, using some of our Crowdfunder money and as we’ve expanded we’ve moved to a bigger unit twice. Funding also enabled us to have a paid worker to help us with Volunteer Engagement and publicity.

In June 2023 OVCA (Ouse Valley Climate Action) gave us funding and also said if we could put on a big event they could fund this too. Through this the idea for the first Swap, Share, Repair event was born. We worked together with the Hospitable Environment to put on the first event in January 2024 at the Hillcrest Centre. It included a clothes swap which some of our textiles volunteers helped to organise, some workshops, a regular Repair Cafe, stalls in the hall and live music, accompanied by a free light lunch provided by the Hospitable Environment. It attracted over 250 people. We’ve run similar events the two following years, each one attracting 250 people, sharing skills and keeping hundreds of items from landfill and incineration.

We continue to run weekly stalls and sometimes have stalls at community events. We’re delighted that more and more people have heard of us and are using our services – a recent library stall saw 5 loans from the Library of Things.