Over the next couple of weeks we’re going to be publishing short profiles of makers who are taking part in Making Uncovered, our celebration of creativity in Lambeth on 13 September.
Wolle+Hide design and make products that mix a rural and urban aesthetic. We make handmade high quality women’s and men’s fashion accessories from natural materials for design-conscious individuals.
Wolle+Hide products combine wool, leather and sheepskin together, creating tactile, useable bags and purses. We use simple shapes that show off the quality of our materials and incorporate details that make each product unique.
Wolle+Hide support the Campaign for Wool and British farmers and weavers – all of our products are handmade in Britain.
Why are you taking part in Making Uncovered?
I have been involved in the fashion and textiles world for 30 years and decided to set up my business because I wanted to share my love of natural fabrics, simple design, quality making, and of course sheep, with others.
I strongly believe in the revival in British craft and design and the awareness of ethical based products and sustainability.
I decided to take part in Making Uncovered because I believe that it is important to communicate your passion to others, and as a Lambeth resident of many years I am delighted to take up this opportunity.
What will you be doing at Making Uncovered?
I want others to share my passion for wonderful materials – focusing on tactile wool. We are offering the experience of making simple shaped purses that show the beauty and texture of the cloth and that are lined with printed cotton fabrics.
The purses will be handmade and we will be demonstrating how to decorate them with appliqué, beads/buttons, handmade tassels and handmade felt beads/balls.
Wolle+Hide will be running one-hour workshops at 12.30pm and 3.30pm on making a wool purse or phone cover. Price £10, including materials. Book now on Eventbrite.
Last Wednesday was our August Makers’ Club on the topic of ‘Pitching to shops and press’ held at the lovely venue of Brixton Impact Hub. We chose the topic of pitching because, although it seems far away, it’s around this time that makers need to begin thinking about Christmas if they want to make the most of the opportunities it offers. Persuading shops to take your work and being featured in press and on blogs are two ways to raise the profile of your business.
Our two speakers this month were Binki Taylor and Kim Winter. At the meeting these expert speakers gave tips on how to approach businesses, journalists and bloggers for collaborations, sales opportunities and features.
There was a great turn-out of makers for the meeting – even though it was August and the height of the holiday season! It was fantastic to see old friends and meet new Makerhoodies and non-members, and hear about their experiences and adventures in making. Makers were at all different stages of their journey, from not selling at all to supplying independent shops and even a small supermarket chain.
Our speakers personal and professional experience as maker, independent shop owner, coach, editor and south Londoners shone through as they advised makers on questions about following up on positive press leads, how to pitch over the phone and when the time is right to speak to large stores about stocking your work.
It’s not all about the speakers though and it was great to see makers who live and work locally in Lambeth get together, meet one another and talk about their experiences. Who knows where that might lead!
Thanks again to our fabulous speakers, Binki and Kim, to the wonderful Brixton Impact Hub for hosting us and to the lovely Lenny of RunnyCustard for her photography skills.
See you all in September!
*************************************************** About our speakers
Binki Taylor is a coach-mentor at the School for Creative Startups and co-founder of Circus, an art and vintage homeware store at the heart of Brixton Village Market. Binki is also one of the people behind the launch of the Brixton Design District in conjunction with the London Design Festival which runs from 13-21st September 2014, London wide.
Kim Winter is a director of Makerhood and set up her editorial consultancy Write Expression in 2009, specialising in building WordPress websites for makers, sole traders and small community groups. Kim’s own blog, Flextiles, charts her experiments in textiles, especially wet felting and natural dyeing.
Makerhood’s Makers’ Club supports makers who live or work in Lambeth by offering the chance to meet other local makers and businesses at talks, business development workshops and social events. We also organise and advertise local selling opportunities. Membership costs £25 a year. Find out more here: http://www.makerhood.com/join-makers-club
Known for her ever-cheerful presence at Brixton Makers’ Market, and her slightly surreal cartoon strip Eric the Fish in Brixton Bugle, Pam Williams tells us about her nomadic life and all-night stints of drawing at Smithfield meat market.
Your work features locations from around the world – Brixton, Greece, Hong Kong: you seem to like travelling!
My father was in the army, so I moved around a lot – we lived in Singapore and Germany when I was a child. So it seemed natural for me to go travelling after college – I went to Greece for three years and New York for three years. Anyone who’s been in the army knows you get the three-year itch!
Were you working as an artist on these trips?
I did all sorts of things! In Greece I lived with a family. I taught English, which helped pay the bills, but I also painted and drew whenever I could– I wanted to develop a skill.
I studied graphic design at Manchester University, and my love of drawing was triggered by a project where we were told to go out into the city and draw. So I took my pad and pen and went for a walk in Manchester. A pub gave me a pint of Guinness and let me sit on their steps to draw. I was completely happy – I just sat and watched and drew and drank! (Guiness is full of iron, I needed iron…).
When I went through the drawings a couple of days later most of them were absolute rubbish. But there was one – it was only small, about 2 inches by 3 inches – of an old man walking away, in his old coat and shoes, with a plastic shopping bag. It had really captured so much about him with a line, magical! I’ve spent the next 30 years discovering how I did it.
And you know now?
Yes! I used to be a watercolour artist in the 1980s, but I never drew for work – drawing was my freedom. I wanted to understand and keep that flow of expression. I worked out a system of how to manage it, and I’ve been teaching that method ever since– how to develop your own style.
I spent about a year going to Smithfield meat market, which started at midnight! It was when they were renovating it to meet European standards, and I would sit on the pavement three nights a week from midnight to 9am, drawing.
The traders pretended not to notice me – just left me alone to draw. Then one day one trader skirted past me, had a look and yelled “’Ere Jack, she’s got yer!”.
How did you get involved with Makerhood?
I’d been working on my ambition to be an artist since leaving college, and I’d had real highs and lows. There were times when I thought shall I just give up. I felt that as an illustrator my work had really developed, but as a recognised “artist” in society there was still a way to go yet.
Makerhood approached me via the market traders when they began to help explore their own ideas. It helped to regenerated energy and purpose for myself.
I started volunteering with Brixton Market, and when Brixton Village opened I got involved with running the community shop and met a lot of young artists and entrepreneurs – we had a useful symbiotic exchange. Then Makerhood started up and helped set up the makers’ market – they had this database of makers they could call on so it made it much easier.
I really appreciate how Makerhood supports artists with professional business advice. For me it’s been like a second chance – it’s been really timely to develop my revival and underpin the adventures I’ve had.
Among other things, Pam is currently working on a book of memoirs about Hong Kong, based on a series of sketches and paintings she did in 1996-97, during the run-up to the handover back to China.
You’ll find Pam at Brixton Makers’ Market on Station Road on the second Saturday of every month.
For the first time, Makerhood is taking a stall in the Crafts Marquee at the Lambeth Country Show, on 19 and 2o July.
We’ll be selling the work of eight different makers, four on each day, so now you have an excuse to come along on both Saturday and Sunday to see what’s on offer!
To whet your appetite, here are some details of the makers who will be selling.
Carol teaches feltmaking, needlefelting and various styles of embroidery. At her south London workshops you’ll spend time kickstarting your creativity, getting away from screens and housework for a few hours, working with beautiful materials, feeling productive, positive and focused, then you’ll go home with some lovely, tactile, handmade items for yourself or to give as gifts. You can also buy handmade workshop gift vouchers for friends – ideal for someone who doesn’t want to accumulate any more clutter!
Wolle + Hide make handmade high quality fashion accessories from wool, leather and sheepskin, creating tactile, useable bags and purses for design conscious individuals. They strongly believe in the revival in craft and design and the awareness in ethical based products and sustainability. Making handmade products has enabled them to show their passion for wonderful materials using simple shapes that show off the beautiful texture of the cloth, suppleness of the leather and the tactile nature of sheepskin: combining these materials to maximise the overall textural experience.
Cute & Paste use recycled wine corks as an inspiration for all sorts of home decor pieces; their creations include wine cork boards, coat hangers, key hooks, chalkboards and much more. The Cute & Paste twist to the old useful pin cork board gives them an abundance of character and charm. You can now make a cork board the feature of your room. Whenever possible they use recycled frames or carefully source them from hidden treasure troves. Most of the wine corks are collected from a friendly restaurant in central London (added to a few collected themselves along the way).
Originally a fine art graduate and at present a teacher of design and technology, Gill has designed and made products in a range of materials throughout her life. Her current project was born out of her hatred of waste and her conviction that something practical and stylish could be made out of all the perfectly good fabric that is discarded when an umbrella breaks, as they often do. It led to the creation of the ‘um-bag’, followed by brooches, bike seat covers and bunting.
Annie makes mosaics for the home and garden. She loves to upcycle and use all manner of materials, from car windscreen glass, broken jewellery, in fact anything she can lay her hands on! She also has a jewellery range which she makes from vintage china. She just loves the thought that small broken pieces can be up together again to make a beautiful whole. Each one of her pieces is original, unique and one of a kind.
Pam’s passion to observe and capture people and life in her surroundings has spanned over 30 years, dominating her work as an illustrator and fine artist internationally in New York, Hong Kong and Europe. She established her permanent studio in London in 1991, and now sells prints, posters and T-shirts of Brixton scenes she has sketched.
Kim Winter of Flextiles is a textile artist specialising in wet felting and dyeing with natural dyes, especially indigo. She particularly likes upcyling scarves from auctions and charity shops and overdyeing them using the Japanese technique of shibori (a kind of sophisticated tie dye). Because each scarf is a different fabric, pattern and colour, it makes it more interesting for her as an artist, and means that customers know they are buying something unique.
We’re thrilled to announce that Making Uncovered, Makerhood’s live showcase of local creativity, is back for a second year!
Last year it was a runaway success, showcasing the talents of local makers and artists to over 700 people who attended during the day.
Making Uncovered 2014 is on Saturday 13 September at a great new community venue at 6 Somerleyton Road. We can’t wait!
To get a sense of what it’s like, have a look at this video from last year. More to come as we start to firm up the line up and other events and workshops on the day. We’ll share it on this blog and on our Twitter and Facebook pages. Tickets will be released in August.
Applications to take part are open to all Makerhood members. The applications deadline is 25 June. (If you’re a member and don’t know how to apply please drop us a line!)
Makerhoodie Kaylene describes herself as a “displaced/misplaced Canadian who has found a home in good ole Londontown”. She lives in Brixton with her husband and two cats, Fury and Kafka, who were very keen to be part of this interview, as you can see from the photo!
Every month Kaylene provides an illustration for Brixton Bugle, based on an idea suggested by a reader, and her first solo exhibition “for some time” is about to open at Studio 73 in Brixton Village. Kaylene also illustrated the newly published Recipes from Brixton Village, written by Miss South, another Bugle contributor.
How did you get involved with the recipe book?
I got called by the publisher, who saw my stuff in the Bugle. Although Miss South also writes for the Bugle, I didn’t know her before this. We sat in the market and had a chat, took photos of the traders and chatted to everyone. They gave me a list of what they wanted, I did about 50 illustrations and just handed them over. So I didn’t see what the book looked like till it was published!
Have you tried any of the recipes yet?
I’m not yet convinced by African land snails! But I really like Asian food, so I’ll probably try the recipes from KaoSarn and Okan first.
Tell us about your exhibition.
The theme is “Ships in Small Water”. A friend suggested the idea, and it appealed to me because it’s a bit funny. I’ve done seven screen prints and it’s been a challenge! I’m still learning about screen printing, and I decided to do them on brown paper, which is thin, and it rolls up, it’s slippery, it moves around – it’s very fiddly! And they’re all three colours, so with seven prints that’s 21 layers! But I’m very happy with how they’ve come out.
So it’s been a very busy time for you.
Yes – because I work as an art teacher four days a week so I do the printing after work and at weekends. Recently, I’ve been illustrating educational materials for the South London Botanical Institute but have otherwise had a bit of time to think about new work and this exhibition which has been great.
Recipes from Brixton Village is available at Brixton Village, good local booksellers and direct from Kitchen Press, price £15.99.
“Ships in Small Water” is at Studio 73, Brixton Village, from 19 to 28 May.
The Vegan Tart delightfully challenged my preconceptions – I didn’t imagine that vegan cakes and savouries would tempt me, or that their ‘Head Tart’, Dumisani Nyathi, would turn up sporting a beard, but after talking to him I’ll be pigging out on a ‘lime & thyme’ cake at the next opportunity!
Read on to find out what made The Vegan Tart special enough to win ‘Best in Show’ at the 2013 Brixton Bake-off.
Tell us a bit about The Vegan Tart, what you make and where you sell it.
I run The Vegan Tart with my partner. We make high quality vegan cakes and savouries. We bake traditional cakes but use our unique combinations of flavours to make them special.
Since 2011 we’ve been selling at the ‘Bakers and Flea’ market in Brixton on Station Road on the first Saturday of every month (next one April 5th). As well as the regular Brixton crowd, the Brixton Vegan Walkabout meetup comes along, bringing us up to 35 eager customers!
Our products are also available at The Lazy Rhubarb in Tulse Hill, and we do other ad-hoc markets and events, such as the Greenwich Food Fest in February and a recent vegan high tea at the Effra Social – these are listed on our website www.thevegantart.co.uk . We also take orders and are often baking away for a birthday or wedding, making sure there is great tasting food which can be eaten by everyone.
What inspired you to get started?
I’ve been vegan for about 5 years. Even before I became vegan, as an American, I found British cakes very dry, and after it was worse – the restaurants seemed to provide only dry bland offerings for vegans. I felt I could make better ones myself, and started experimenting. Then friends started to buy them, and orders started to take off in 2011. I was a support worker at the time, but after I went travelling to Spain and north Africa I began to think about working for myself, and decided to make baking a business on my return.
It doesn’t yet bring in enough to pay the rent, so I work 3 days a week as a gardener, but we are currently negotiating with the ‘cat cafe’ opening in the East End, and once we have two clients of that sort, I can bake full-time!
What makes your products special?
Besides them all being completely vegan, we do both cakes and savouries, and try to make our products a bit different from the usual – we mix it up a bit, jazzing up the flavours to give people alternative flavours eg a lime & thyme cake, a savoury fig & asparagus tart. We were also officially acknowledged as special by winning the Best in Show and Best Savoury categories at the 2013 Brixton Bake-off! There were over 30 entrants and the judges included the Mayor of Lambeth, Ms Cupcake, the manager of Morleys and Levi Roots.
It’s not just the quality of our products which makes us stand out though – we have quirkiness to our brand, such as our special apron and hat outfits, our branded granny trolley and army bag for transporting our goods, my job title (Head Tart), etc, which make us stand out from the crowd – people often make comments or ask to take pictures. I’d like to have a branded cargo bike to transport my goods in. It’s all very fun and home made, for example a friend made the aprons and hats, and we used an old banner to brand our trolley.
Sounds exciting – how do you go about marrying unusual flavours?
Even as a child I used to try making weird concoctions of noodle packs, those were my first experiments in flavour! I suppose it meant I was used to trying things out… I also invested in the Flavour Thesaurus. It’s not that good for vegan produce, but can give good ideas, it makes us think about the way the food hits the taste buds. We also research into websites and recipes and when we see an interesting combination of flavours, try it out. That’s how I discovered the ‘fig and asparagus’ combination.
You have a section on your website for ‘themed and quirky’ cakes. What’s the strangest cake you’ve been asked to make?
It was a topsy turvy cake for the annual ‘time for tea’ event at the Mental Health Foundation. I made a ‘Mad Hatters’ cake involving big chunks of cake which had to be balanced at crazy angles – that was not an easy cake to make!
What attracted you to get involved with Makerhood?
I wanted to get involved from the beginning but at that time it was just in Brixton and we were in Tulse Hill, I could see all these great networking events and very personable emails coming out and I kept thinking ‘hurry up, hurry up and come to our area!’ so I joined as soon as it opened to Tulse Hill, about a year ago.
It’s great, very friendly and affordable and the events are very useful. I’ve been to events on ‘branding your stall’, social media, and a food taster where Jay Rayner of the Observer gave feedback and a local shop owner helped with pricing, it’s really nice to have that kind of help and diversity.
I’m now a member of the steering group for Makerhood Lambeth, which gives me an opportunity to interact with a wide group of individuals who have a passion for creating and sharing that passion with others.
What do you like about living &/or working in Lambeth?
I’ve lived here since 2003, and I don’t know what it is about Lambeth, it’s brilliant, so diverse – in a lot of people’s minds it’s just Waterloo or Brixton, but there are all these places you can go to and the communities are never the same, the shops are never the same – I’m glad that Lambeth hasn’t been “uber-branded”!
What’s your hot tip for a hidden pleasure or treasure in Lambeth?
Bonnington Cafe in Vauxhall. It’s one of Lambeth’s hidden gems. Also the Rookery in Streatham, which is never busy and is very secluded…and the things you see by looking up. Opposite the White Lion in Streatham is a building with 4 elephants, take a look next time you are up that way!
Dumisani Nyathi, ‘Head Tart’ of The Vegan Tart
You can try some of the wonderful cakes and savouries The Vegan Tart have to offer at the ‘Bake and Flea’ market in Brixton Station Road on the first Saturday of the month* , or check out the mouth-watering cakes you can order via their website www.thevegantart.co.uk
*next one is April 5th, but alas The Vegan Tart will be missing this month due to injury, so catch them on May 3rd
Makerhood has many partners and collaborators who work with us to promote the work of local makers and offer them special discounts or exclusive opportunities. So we thought it was time to shine a spotlight on some of them. Here, Anita Thorpe, owner of Diverse, an independent gift shop in Brixton, explains how she has benefited from her collaboration with Makerhood.
Tell us about how you started your shop, Diverse. I was a self-employed trainer in the not-for-profit sector, training managers and their staff in how to do their jobs more effectively. I also traded at Brixton Market in Brixton Station Road at weekends, selling sterling silver jewellery. This was seen to be quite risky at the time, selling silver jewellery on a market stall in Brixton – because of Brixton’s reputation at the time – but it went really well and I realised it could work as a shop.
So I started my first shop in 1999 at 54 Atlantic Road. I was there for six years, then at 62 Atlantic Road for five years, then at 65 Atlantic Road for one year! Then the opportunity came up to be somewhere more central, on Coldharbour Lane, so I’ve been there since Christmas.
How did you get involved with Makerhood? I got a call from someone asking if I could do a presentation at a Makerhood meeting. But I was still running training courses and I was doing a training session in the Midlands, so I asked Jane Doxey, with whom I was working at the time, to do the Makerhood meeting instead. Jane did the meeting and developed the link with Makerhood.
Then at Christmas 2012, Jane suggested bringing in local makers to sell in the shop. We’ve always bought from individual makers as well as from gift companies, but had never featured the makers in this way. So we set up our Makers in the Hood promotion – mainly but not exclusively with Makerhood makers. It was phenomenal – it worked really well. We got a lot of attention through the press and social media – one of the benefits of partnering with a local initiative is it creates a story.
So we did it again in the spring – we didn’t sell quite as much as at Christmas but it still went well. We learned from that, and when we did the Makerhood promotion this Christmas we had stricter criteria for inclusion (Makerhood members only), an interview procedure, and offered some higher value items.
What have been the benefits to you of collaborating with Makerhood?
Giving customers what they want – they like to hear about the provenance of what they’re buying and the story behind local makers.
Press/publicity – featured makers and Makerhood spread the word through social media and press. Sometimes makers come into the shop with their entire family!
Helping people to learn – this can be infuriating sometimes but I enjoy helping the makers to become better business people. That makes for an easier and more profitable relationship for both parties.
Helps keeping both the makers and my business in touch with trends and needs – I can give the makers customer feedback; they give me more insight into how things are developing in the creative world.
I’m a showcase for Brixton talent – as the area gets more visitors, this is important – and it helps keep money in the local community.
The work is unique – it’s not all over the high street; that gives my business a point of difference.
I get to make links with other businesses – for example, I had a call from a maker about another gift shop that might be interested in working with local makers in a similar way.
Positive perception of the business – partnering with local people really helps to integrate your business in the community. I often hear people referring to Diverse as “their” gift shop!
Social responsibility – it’s a way of building and giving back to the community that supports your business.
So what would be your advice to other businesses considering collaborating with Makerhood? I’d say get involved! You will gain as much personally and as a business as the makers will, and on so many different levels – including the bottom line! It will affect people’s perception of your business in a very positive way, and help raise your profile.
I’d be very happy to talk to anyone who is wondering whether to become a Makerhood partner.
Diverse is at 390 Coldharbour Lane, Brixton SW9 8LF. You can follow Anita on Twitter @diversebrixton
Brixton-based textile designer Robyn tells us how her great-grandmother’s notebook inspired her brand, and of the links between creativity and mental health.
Tell us a bit about Archie Mac London, what do you make or do?
Textile design. It’s all about stories! I use these story-telling textiles to make cushions and purses, and I’m currently working on a range of washbags, make-up bags and iPad covers. In future I plan to create fashion-wear too.
What do you mean by ‘story-telling textile design’?
It started from a project about childhood. I had the intention of bringing the fun elements of childhood into a more adult form of design.
I interviewed a friend who gave me a fantastic collection of childhood pictures from the ’80s. They were wearing garish T-shirts with Simpsons cartoons on, and I was fascinated by the hair shapes of the characters. I began to manipulate them and use them to create patterns. In this way the designs originated in elements of a childhood story, and carried them into the future. Icons of my own childhood, such as a headless doll, now feature in my designs.
What kind of processes are involved in creating your cushions?
I begin with childhood images and objects and create collage – using both old-style paper and scissors and computer programs – to explore these shapes and take them backwards and forwards. Sometimes surprising patterns result: some have come up with an Islamic look and then on the next iteration been reminiscent of African prints, others have the look of fractals.
The final designs are printed onto fabric, which I sew into cushions, bags and other items. Commercial printing is extremely expensive, so I’m currently learning screen-printing so that I can also do that part of the process myself in future.
What inspired you to get started with Archie Mac?
The precious discovery, about a year ago, of an album my great-grandmother, Annie, had kept of her own notes and the charming sketches and cartoons of my great-grandfather, Archie McMillan. He signed each one with his monogram – AMcM, combined to make a little spider – and this inspired the name (Archie Mac) and logo of my brand.
It was so exciting to find this creative ancestry in my family. There has been something of a gap in creative expression in the intervening generations!
I didn’t come from an art background. Until recently I worked in social care, as a mental health support worker with the Community Options Team, and I repeatedly observed the importance of creative activity in restoring confidence and self esteem. This sparked the idea of setting up a social enterprise aimed at developing creative opportunities for other women (which I’ve recently started with workshops at the Eaves Centre in Brixton). Newham College recognised my enthusiasm and took a chance on me, offering me a place on their Fashion Foundation course, which gave me the opportunity to start experimenting with textiles.
What makes your products special?
The storytelling aspect. I’d love to create bespoke designs for clients which reflect what’s important to them – perhaps featuring images or icons from their own childhood, or those of their children – and incorporate these into textiles or products which are unique to them. A wedding dress, perhaps! I work primarily with fabric but there is no reason why the designs shouldn’t be used to decorate other products. Your own story-telling kettle, or toaster?
I currently hand-stitch my logo, derived from Archie’s monogram, onto every piece. I love that personal connection with each item of my work.
Tell us about the exciting new workshops you are involved with?
These are workshops in embroidery and beading at the Eaves Centre, a Brixton-based centre for supporting women who experience violence. Currently they are monthly, but I am keen to make them more frequent. The workshops teach new skills and an outlet for creative expression that bypasses any fear about drawing.
The women who attend are each making small panels. We’ve also been making up embroidery packs to send out to women who cannot or do not choose to come to the centre, to encourage them to participate. We are using the theme of ‘hope’ and will combine the small pieces we make into one large panel. We intend to display the final panel to raise awareness and possibly funds for the Eaves centre.
We’ve received a lot of support from local sources, including Simply Fabrics, Freecycle, and Fiona of Oh Sew Brixton!, for which we’re extremely grateful, as we had no funding for the project.
What attracted you to get involved with Makerhood?
The network is such a wonderful precious thing: there is this lovely cycle of kindness there. It can be lonely being creative and it’s great to know that there’s somewhere so welcoming and supportive in the borough.
What do you like about living &/or working in Lambeth?
I don’t know what it is about the borough, but it attracts so many creative people. There is a really good network of creatives here, and I have received so much support from people such as Sinead of Crafty Fox, and Colin Crooks and Lydia Gardner on the ‘start your own enterprise course’ run by Tree Shepherd, and also getting involved with Brand Amplifier has been amazing and brilliant!
Also, I greatly value that working in mental health gives me the opportunity to meet people with such different lifestyles and life experiences from my own. Being exposed to such a multicultural, multi-layered community is exciting and inspiring . For example, in the Eaves Centre workshops people bring so many different experiences and ideas to the table.
What’s your hot tip for a hidden pleasure or treasure in Lambeth?
One best memory I will take with me if and when I leave will be the conker trees by the Lido – I think I will always feel that childhood excitement from picking up shiny conkers!
Update 27 January: all the testing slots are now full. Thank you so much everyone for support!
Sit with us for 1 hour on Saturday 1 February to help us review our new website and earn £15.
As you know, at Makerhood we support local makers and promote local goods, workshops, markets and events. Our website plays a big role in this. We’re making some improvements to it, and we’d love to pass it by a few people to get your thoughts.
By talking to us you will help local makers and support a social enterprise. You’ll also get a perk of £15, either in Brixton Pound, or in standard cash, or in the form of delicious local food from Brixton Cornercopia.
We are looking for people from Lambeth who are not our Makers’ Club members and who can meet us for 1 hour on 1 February in central Brixton.
Is that you? Or do you know someone – a friend or family member – who can help?
Please tell us in the form below. We’ll be in touch shortly with the details.
Wolle+Hide design and make products that mix a rural and urban aesthetic. We make handmade high quality women’s and men’s fashion accessories from natural materials for design-conscious individuals.
I have been involved in the fashion and textiles world for 30 years and decided to set up my business because I wanted to share my love of natural fabrics, simple design, quality making, and of course sheep, with others. 
I want others to share my passion for wonderful materials – focusing on tactile wool. We are offering the experience of making simple shaped purses that show the beauty and texture of the cloth and that are lined with printed cotton fabrics.
As you know, at Makerhood we support local makers and promote local goods, workshops, markets and events. Our website plays a big role in this. We’re making some improvements to it, and we’d love to pass it by a few people to get your thoughts.
Makerhood 