Our Story

Founded by Rocío Salceda, Repair Café El Barrio grew from a personal journey into a collective, community-run practice.

RCEB was born in El Barrio (East Harlem) -- a neighborhood with a long history of collective care, resistance, and self-reliance.

This is not accidental.

This is where the Young Lords organized.
This is where Union Settlement shaped generations -- including mine.
This is where Artspace PS109 stands today, and where Repair Café El Barrio has its permanent home.

Repair Café El Barrio grew out of a personal need as much as a collective one.

After years of rebuilding my own life -- migrating, divorcing, reinventing myself, surviving -- I came to understand repair not as a technical act, but as a human one. Repair is what we do when we refuse to throw people, objects, or stories away. Repair is what happens when we slow down, gather, and take care of things together.

Free repairs were the starting point -- the door in. But they were never the whole story.

Very quickly, people arrived.

Volunteers began showing up with their own histories, skills, and reasons for being here. Many of them are immigrants too -- people who carry deep knowledge in their hands and long journeys in their bodies. What emerged was something inter-generational, international, and deeply human.

What is RCEB in 2026

Today, Repair Café El Barrio is held by a community of volunteers from Puerto Rico, Turkey, Spain, Croatia, Mexico, Malaysia, China, France, Colombia, Germany, and the United States. Some are artists, some are engineers, some are elders, some are young, some are trained, some are self-taught -- all of them bring fabulous skills, generosity, and big hearts.

Here, knowledge moves sideways. Elders teach youth. Immigrants teach locals. Locals teach newcomers. People fix objects while sharing stories, accents, memories and laughter.

Repair Café El Barrio is a community-run, volunteer-powered space, not a professional repair service. We repair together. We learn together. And often, what gets repaired goes beyond the object itself -- it’s our relationship to time, value, and one another.

As we grow, our work now includes:

• Community repair events

  Educational programs and classes

  Experimental and artistic programming

  Group mindfullness and breathwork

  Collaborations with artists, musicians, educators, and cultural institutions

  An evolving archive of stories, objects, and practices