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Our Saw-Some Soapbox

Most job descriptions don’t include “drive a wooden car made in three weeks down a massive ramp, over four jumps in front of 1200 people”.  However in my second month working with Handcrafted, this is one of the unexpected things I have done.

Along with the other teams, we had two attempts to get down to the bottom of the 450 metre track at Herrington Country Park as quickly as possible. This wasn’t without a shortage of drama, mechanical changes and spectacular crashes. Continue reading “Our Saw-Some Soapbox”

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The Power of Suggestion

There isn’t a roadmap for what we are doing at Handcrafted. We have a clear sense of our mission to restore and empower people through training in the context of a creative and inclusive community. We know that there’s always room for improvement and innovation. In formal meetings and casual conversations, we are preoccpied with how we can adapt to do it better. Everyone who comes along to be part of the journey has a stake in that.

Empowering people means not ‘doing stuff to and for them’ but enabling them to take initiative and determine how they will thrive and become the’ best version of themselves’. Over the last few weeks we asked our trainees to give Handcrafted some feedback and suggestions for improvement. After all, if it’s not working for the people it’s here for, what is the point in doing it? Continue reading “The Power of Suggestion”

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Friday the 13th

Friday the 13th of April has dawned; the most recent in a hat-trick of grey days when the weather has conspired to drag our moods down. Superstition dictates this is an unlucky day, that you might be safer to stay under the quilt, but we have a full compliment of trainees in the workshop, rearing to go at 9am.

Of course, we always keep a wary eye out for hazards and aim to stay safe, regardless of the date, but why not make this a day to count our blessings?

We asked around the trainees, “What was the ‘luckiest’ thing that ever happened to you?” Continue reading “Friday the 13th”

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A New Door

Our new women’s support worker, Mim, writes about how her experience in prisons led to her to come and work for us.

Three years ago, I started working in Durham’s prisons. Among the many new things I learnt were a couple of phrases that kept repeating themselves. The first is ‘the conveyor belt’ and the second, ‘the revolving door’.

The ‘conveyor belt’ is an image which describes people reaching the end of their prison sentence and falling off the end of the support plan. And unfortunately, the first often leads to the second. The revolving door: A spin-cycle which means you’re regularly in and out of prison. Stuck in a cycle. Life’s spin cycle is not just something that happens in the prison system. It’s also a familiar idea to those stuck in a cycle of addiction and violence.
Continue reading “A New Door”

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Making sure nobody gets left behind

Staff and trustees spent a day at the start of this year talking about what makes Handcrafted tick. We asked how we could make sure we keep working on those fundamentals and find evidence that they are turning into actions, more than warm, fuzzy feelings (although those are nice, too).

We all agreed that “Inclusion” should be right up in our top five. That means we work hard to remove barriers to people benefiting from what we do. But how can we show that this is happening? Continue reading “Making sure nobody gets left behind”