Hello! And thank you for looking at our page, it's really appreciated.
The Living Furniture Project is a new social enterprise based in London. We take unwanted furniture and renovate it in a unique style, employing homeless people to do this work. It's about giving them a chance to get their lives back on track, and reducing landfill waste. Once we have the furniture, we sell it on and reinvest all the profits back into the business.
It's really important to us that we create high quality furniture. So for each set of furniture we produce, we partner with an experienced furniture maker who acts as a curator for the collection.
This fundraising campaign is all about our launch collection, curated by Rupert Blanchard (see below).
Rupert is a fantastic designer with a design pedigree in salvage, vintage and retro-inspired designs. He won British Product of the Year at the Design Awards in 2011, has had his work commissioned by the Barbican as well as fashion designer Ally Cappelino, and was featured in both the London Design Festival and Shoreditch Design Triangle. The interior design press also have a lot of love for Mr. Blanchard, with Apartment Therapy, Inhabitat and Upcyclist all regularly covering his work.
Right now Rupert is focussing on finding the right raw materials to build our collection - using his unparalleled knowledge of Londons well-hidden clearance sales, junk yards and forgotten alleyways - filled to the brim with old furniture that would otherwise be thrown away.
Because you never know what this city is going to throw up, we can't say for certain what the collection will look like. But 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 firm up our plans, we'll be updating this page. In the meantime, you can check out some of Rupert's recent salvage work on his website, to get a flavour of what the collection will look like.
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
However please note it's work-in-progress, our wonderful team of volunteers are currently cooking up an all singing, all dancing version which will go live in a couple of weeks. We'll update you as soon as it does.
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
The owner of this project has not made any updates yet.
