Viljandi festival promotes repair and reuse with 30 workshops

ERR reported that Viljandi Culture Academy held its fifth repair festival on Saturday, featuring 30 workshops and a flea market selling second-hand goods.

Over five years, the festival has become one of Estonia’s most prominent initiatives promoting repair and reuse. Workshops taught visitors how to mend national costumes, renovate old houses, restore books, prevent waste, maintain scythes and sharpen knives.

Repair techniques were also demonstrated in blacksmithing. “Metal is a material that allows itself to be repaired. You can add a piece, grind something away or forge it,” blacksmith Tõnis Luik said.

The festival also explored energy communities, in which people generate energy using solar power, wind or biomass. “This makes it possible to reduce the price of electricity because people consume renewable energy themselves and sell it among the members, buildings and companies belonging to their community,” said Annika Emilie Kullamäe, a project assistant at the Ragnar Nurkse Institute.

The flea market offered everything from tools, clothes and furniture to car parts. Trader Rego Purin, who came from Tallinn, said sellers also gave items away to promote environmentally conscious thinking.

Festival organisers said the event was helping change attitudes towards repairing and reusing goods. Ave Matsin, programme director of the Heritage Technology curriculum at Viljandi Culture Academy, said the ideal was for products to be made repairable and for consumers to consider repairing an item before buying a new one.