We take furniture that people don’t want any more, we restore and redecorate it, and sell it on. We only employ homeless people to do the work. Old furniture. Made Good.
Your donations will be used to fund a homeless persons salary, allowing them to get off the streets and into permanent accommodation, as well as training courses which build their furniture making skills, professional and personal confidence.
The Living Furniture Project is a social enterprise - an organisation that solves problems in society using a commercial approach. Below is our mission statement which acts as a guide to everything we do.
1. We exist to provide paid jobs and training to the homeless
- Rough sleeping in London increased by 42% between 2011 and 2012
- The average life expectancy of a homeless person is just 47 years
- Our homeless employees are paid London Living Wage and given specialist support to help them rebuild their lives
2. We exist to reduce landfill waste
- Last year in the UK, households landfilled 670,000 tonnes of furniture
- Research by industry body WRAP showed that 45% was re-usable
- The UK will completely run out of space for landfill in 2018
- Each piece is an original design from a carefully selected pool of furniture makers
- Our homeless employees are given intensive classroom and workshop training
- They are also partnered with a "buddy", a professional furniture maker who helps with creating the furniture
Our first collection of furniture is currently being planned in our London workshop. It is being curated by award-winning and press acclaimed eco-designer Rupert Blanchard.
Rupert won British Product of the Year at The British Design Awards 2011, sponsored by Elle Decoration, and has produced pieces for The Barbican, Selfridges, Liberty of London, Mary Portas / Save The Children, Office and fashion designer Ally Capellino.
His work is currently available from Elemental in Spitalfields Market, if you want to get a feel for what he does. Or you can check out his blog, Styling and Salvage.
We will be posting sketches, designs and photos of the collection as it is built, check out our blog (coming soon!) to see the latest updates. And when all the furniture is ready in May 2013, you’ll be able to purchase it at a special pop-up auction, more details coming soon...
Our aim is to have around 25 pieces including a dining table, desk, sideboard, odd chairs, free standing bookshelves, bedside cabinets, coffee tables and maybe some corner cabinets.
As we find old furniture and start to restore it, we'll be updating this page. In the meantime, you can support us by backing The Living Furniture Project with a small donation.
WHO ARE OUR HOMELESS EMPLOYEES?
We have partnered with two charities who specialise in homelessness - Providence Row and Crisis and are working with them to hire our homeless employees. Each charity continues to support our employees as they transition back into employment.
WHAT SUPPORT DO OUR EMPLOYEES RECEIVE?
They will be paid £8.55 per hour (your donations will help fund this), and also receive an employer reference, classroom and on-the-job training (again your donations help with this training).
We also have a team of wonderful workshop volunteers who mentor our homeless employees as they work. All of our mentors are professional furniture makers, who will be teaching our homeless employees valuable technical skills as well as communication / collaboration skills.
Our workshop is open to all and we're a friendly bunch, so if you'd like to come visit, just email me and we can arrange!
WHAT PROBLEMS ARE WE TRYING TO ADDRESS?
Homelessness is back on the rise since the recession started to bite. 42% more rough sleepers hit the streets of London this year vs. 2011. With the average life expectancy of homeless people at just 47 years, the situation is critical. We want to create jobs to allow homeless people to secure stable, permanent accommodation that gets them off the streets and on to a better life.
In addition, landfill is a "problem solution" we urgently need to start finding an alternative to. Last year in the UK, households landfilled 670,000 tonnes of furniture. Research showed that 45% was re-usable. The UK will completely run out of space for landfill in 2018, so the time to act is now.
IF I GIVE YOU MONEY TODAY, WHAT HAPPENS TO IT?
All money will go directly towards salaries and training for our homeless employees, as well as tools and materials for our workshop. In return we'll send you a nice incentive (look down the right hand side for more details).
WHEN AND WHERE IS THE COLLECTION BEING MADE?
We will start making the collection in February 2013 and aim to finish everything by May 2013. The workshop will be made in our workshop housed at Providence Row (one of our partner charities), in Whitechapel, East London.
WHAT HAPPENS TO THE FURNITURE AFTERWARDS?
The collection will be sold at a pop-up auction event in London in May 2013. 100% of proceeds from the sale will be reinvested into the project. So your donation to this project will have a "double whammy" effect once we sell our furniture.
There's a party after the pop-up auction, and anyone donating over £25 will of course be invited!
IS THIS A CHARITY OR A BUSINESS?
Neither. We are a social enterprise (which is an organisation using a commercial approach to solve a social problem). But we do work with two partner charities who specialise in homeless issues - Providence Row and Crisis.
DO WE HAVE A WEBSITE?
Yes - it's www.thelivingfurnitureproject.org.uk
ABOUT THE FOUNDER
Social entrepreneur Alastair Sloan founded The Living Furniture Project in 2012. Alastair previously worked for Procter & Gamble and then Unilever. You can read more about him here. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to email - .
Thank you!
VIDEO CREDIT - Nick Worpole
PHOTO CREDIT - Natasha Lees
Wow thank you all so much for the flood of donations, tweets of support and all the kind offers of furniture and tools. We are nearly there with EIGHT DAYS TO GO so please help spread the word by sharing this link - THANK YOU!
http://www.sponsume.com/project/living-furniture-project-recycling-furniture-employing-homeless
Things certainly are a little crazy at the moment. Our workshop is being fitted out, courtesy of our fantastic volunteer Joel, and will be open on 3rd February. We've got two apprentices hired, both from homeless backgrounds. They'll be working alongside our volunteers who are all professional makers - offering them mentoring, on-the-job technical training and also helping out with production. We'll be posting profiles of Yinka, Jack, Pinar and Samir on the website shortly.
On the designer side, unfortunately Rupert Blanchard has had to pull back his involvement in the launch collection due to unforeseen circumstances. However, we have been hard at work finding a brilliant replacement and are very excited to be announcing this shortly.
In the meantime, our workshop will be focussing on our first bespoke commissions which have started to come in. My huge thanks goes to Sarah at Revampt. who has been helping us with these, and also introducing me to some very yummy Asian teas while we pull together various moodboards.
A final huge and heartfelt thanks goes to our amazing team of marketing volunteers, who have been fantastic from the off. Michael (from Pixelcabin) has built our website, which was designed by the talented freelance illustrator Claire Pinegar. Natasha Lees and Nick Worpole spend hours creating our photographic and video content, and Hattie MacAndrews is our publicist - she also makes beautiful handmade matchboxes - well worth checking out. If you want a way to support us, please get in touch with any of our volunteers if you have any paid work. They come with my highest recommendation!
I'll keep you updated as things progress. As ever, I'm on or feel free to call me on +44 7920 401 056.
All the best,
Alastair
Founder - The Living Furniture Project
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
From all at The Living Furniture Project
Thank you for all of your support in 2012, your kind emails, tweets and messages have kept us going through these exciting times. We're really looking forward to seeing you all in 2013 as we launch our first furniture collection, bring it on!
Our latest news
- We are delighted to announce that we have hired our first homeless employee, Kevin, who will be starting work with us in February. His salary will allow him to get into safe and permanent accommodation. News about our other employees coming soon...
- Our marketing team (thanks Michael, Claire, Natasha and Nick) have been hard at work finishing our new website - www.thelivingfurnitureproject.org.uk
- Our crowdfunding campaign is going strong, but we still need your help to get to our £3000 target by next month. If you can spare a few pennies, please make a donation and if you've already given, you can help spread the word by sharing the link with friends and family.
That's all for now, enjoy the Christmas festivities and best of luck for 2013!
Best wishes,
Alastair
The Living Furniture Project
Hello!
It's our first update on Sponsume, a couple of weeks in and we've already reached over £800 - fantastic news and thank you so much to all our backers so far!
But we need your help to go even further, all the way to our target of £3000. How can you help? By spreading the word!
- Email the link below to all your friends, family, anyone you've met who you think might be interested
- If you're a blogger or journalist, please consider writing about us, just email for more details.
- If you have a Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn account please post a link to our Sponsume page
- And if you're writing Santa a Christmas letter (and you've been good), please ask him to donate too!
All the money raised is going directly to help homeless people get off the streets and save furniture from horrible landfill sites, so it's a great cause to support in the run up to Christmas.
Well, that's the plugging over - now it's time for an update on what we've been doing here at The LFP. Well, this week there's been lots of work from our lovely volunteers Michael, Natasha and Claire on our all singing, all dancing website. It's looking great and really excited to launch it this weekend. I'm also heading to Crisis tomorrow morning to interview homeless people, with a view to hiring one or two for our workshop. I'll be looking for enthusiastic people, but also those who stand to gain the most from being given a job - those whose life will be truly turned around.
That's all for now, have a great week.
Alastair
The Living Furniture Project
