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| Alison Cann |
The New Premises (1) |
The New Premises (2) |
The New Premises (3) |
Interview by Natalie Moyce
Not End of the Line for Disused Railway
| ABSTRACT |
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| CRAFT a not-for-profit furniture recycling and Bike Hire Organisation based in Ceredigion West Wales, has just successfully landed a 2.6 million pounds project called Dim Pen Y Daith (Not The End of The Line), of which £1.4 million is Objective 1 funding. The money will be used to renovate the premises, namely the disused railway line in Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, a brave move by CRAFT, but now they have central location, which will put them on the map and allow them to expand. The Victorian Railway Station, a grade 2 listed building will be restored very carefully to house the project and its members, with 12 members of staff (and growing) to promote green activities such as cycling to work, recycling furniture and Bike Hire. “Anything you might find in ones home, I can almost guarantee you will find its way through CRAFT at some point. All sorts of furniture, children’s toys, games, books, crockery, we can do anything from a tin opener to a fridge freezer.” (Allison Cann Development Manager for CRAFT) |
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Full interview:
When you set up the funding what was happening with CRAFT at the time? CRAFT was already going, and we really needed to move, we needed to get some new accommodation. Ok, so how long has CRAFT been going for? CRAFT has been going for 10 years. It recycles furniture, electrical goods and bicycles. It’s a community project; it has aims in the environmental sector, the community sector. So how does it get recycled, where does it go and how does the whole thing work? We provide a service for the whole of Ceredigion, although it is concentrated within 10 miles of Aberystwyth, but we are spreading out and that’s one of the reasons and that’s one of the reasons behind this project so we can serve more of the population in Ceredigion. So what happens is that people, and its mostly individuals, bring us things they no longer want or they have no longer got a need for really, and they bring things to us, and we assess them and repair them on site, we’ve got workshops on site so we can repair them when they need to be repaired and then make them available to people who are really on low income or benefits. But in order to remain financially sustainable, we also sell surplus goods to the general public. So we’re different from a lot of furniture reuse projects because our goods are actually available to anyone. Do you think the people of Ceredigion are aware of this scheme? Well, there are actually a lot of people who are not aware of this scheme in Ceredigion. We were concerned about advertising this project as we have received 2 million pounds in funding and we thought it would cause people to think that we have got 2 million pounds in money and that we didn’t need them to come anymore…quite the contrary is true. The money we have received is nearly all to provide us with premises; we’ve bought the disused railway station in the centre of town in Aberystwyth. We are going to completely refurbish the platform there, we’re going to create a building where there isn’t a building really, at the moment it’s just a wall and a roof. We are going to make a building there, its going to be in keeping with the Victorian Railway Station there. It’s a grade 2 listed building so, We’ve got to do it carefully, and then we’ve also got a site at the end of the platform and we’re going to do a workshop, so that’s where all the work will go on. It’s really, and I know this is an overused phrase, really exciting. What it will do is it will demonstrate that reusing things, is part of normal life, it’s what you do. You go to the retail park and you get what you need from the retail park and then you go to CRAFT and you get your stuff that’s going to be reused, recycled. What sort of furniture can you take then?We can take anything that can be reused, well we can’t take gas appliances at all, but electrical, we can do virtually anything apart from cookers, because we don’t have a big enough power supply in this building. It belongs to the council, there are things we are not able to do within it, we can’t take electrical goods, they have to go down to be recycling centre, but anything else, really anything! It’s really wider than just furniture, anything you might find in ones home, I can almost guarantee you will find its way through CRAFT at some point. All sorts of furniture, children’s toys, games, books, crockery, we can do anything from a tin opener to a fridge freezer, So it’s not just the donation of items, which are in need of repair then? Well, it’s anything that can be reused. To one person it might be old, and they don’t want it anymore, to somebody else it might be just what they needed, because they can’t afford to buy something brand new. We can often equip a whole house of everything for a hundred quid – and that includes everything!So how does the process work, how do the goods get distributed out to people, do you work with the council on this?Any sort of established care agency, so it might be one of the bits of the social services, it could be “Beacon of Hope”, it could be “Gofal Ceredigion”, it could be any organisation that can refer people, people can also refer themselves, if they come with a letter from an established agency or something like a local church, or their GP, so really anybody can give us an objective assessment of the things they need and they then get a 25% discount on the cost of our goods which are pitched pretty low anyway. What we want to do is encourage more reuse, so in order for us to do that it makes sense for us to pitch the prices as low as we can. You are a not-for profit company anyway aren’t you? That’s right yes, Ok, so where is the project now and what will the grant enable you to do? We’re in a gearing up phase; we’re going to be moving into a higher profile, town centre location, in 10 months or a year, so we are already employing more people on the back of that…we’re creating an extra 13 full time jobs, that’s on top of the jobs we had already. These jobs could be in the workshop or they could be in the front of house or they could be in the vans, because we obviously need vans now, we’ll be doing more, we provide a free collection service, we collect and deliver as well for a small charge, but yes we will collect for free throughout the whole of Ceredigion. So in terms of timescale, you are building now, when do you hope to have the project finished? The contractors are going to start on-site in September, which will be fantastic – I can’t quite believe it – this month! And yes, at the moment we haven’t firmed up how long the contract period will be, it’s likely to be 10 months, And then you will move into your new premises and be ready to go? That’s right, that’s it, Who were the other funders apart from objective 1 then? There are in all 10 different grants…We have got a really complicated funding package, this is a big scheme, the whole project cost is 6 million pounds and we’ve got some additional revenue funding, because CRAFT is actually a really complicated business, it does an awful lot of different things. We do the recycling, but by running the recycling business we are then able to provide employment, and training, and work placement. We do a lot of work with places like the Job Centre and Coleg Ceredigion. We’ve just got an industrial placement from the University. So we try to provide a lot of opportunities for people who maybe want to get out of work for whatever reason and they can’t compete in the job market, so we like to be able to provide routes in, maybe as a volunteer, and see how it goes, you know, so maybe if they like craft, then that can build up into training while they are here and then hopefully that can be converted into a job – most people at CRAFT started as volunteers. There is somebody here at the moment who is doing driving lessons, there are a number of people here who are doing computer qualifications, we’ve got a couple of people here who have been doing furniture, I myself have being doing some computer training, So yes we provide all sorts of training for all sorts of people. What does CRAFT stand for? Ceredigion Recycling and Furniture Team. Did you set it up yourself? No I started 2 and a half years ago, and its been going for 11. I was employed as the development officer, to really get the funding package sorted out. When I came it was an idea, and CRAFT had taken the hugely brave step of buying the site, and on the back of that they worked with Ceredigion Council. I was employed to really make things happen. So this is part of the growth strategy then. Did it start from very humble beginnings? It started with a couple of people, they were volunteers, and they just did an odd few hours here and there and happened to have Volvo estates, they identified that there was a need for people to have cheap furniture, they were people who were suffering from poverty and Bronglais hospital had 10 wardrobes they didn’t need and this couple saw that they could be used by people who were stuck in the poverty trap and the organisation went on from there. So the Salvation Army got involved and so did the social services. It started with a couple of volunteers a few hours a week. Now it is a proper organised business, and currently we are engaging with the tip of the iceberg, with the new premises and strategy in place we will start marketing ourselves. Up till now we haven’t done any marketing and being out here on a limb we haven’t really been known to the people of Ceredigion. Is there anything you are particularly proud of you would like to relay to people? I just want people to think of us as a proper organised business as that’s what we are. I suppose some of the awards we have received might reflect that. We’ve got a Green Dragon level 2 award, which is environmental, we were the first business in Ceredigion to get that. We have had a Job Centre Award and an Adult Learner award, a furniture-recycling award and Investors in People award. How many people do you currently employ? Last year it was 12, we are already recruiting more people. On Your Bike is part of CRAFT – which often confuses people, so we are also involved in Mountain Bike Camps with Plas Crug leisure centre in Aberyswyth, so what we do is so diverse. What does “On Your Bike” do then?It is part of CRAFT where you can hire a bike, get off a train and go around on your bike. We are also starting training courses for kids and now adults on how to get around on your bike. The whole ethos is green; we help to encourage people to cycle. It’s about lifestyle but it’s also about tourism. One thing, which we will have on our premises, will be a bike lock up and showers so that you can cycle to work and then freshen up and lock your bike up in town to encourage less use of cars. It’s all very environmental. ENDS. |