REPURPOSE

  A Groundwork London project funded by the Life + Programme of the European Commission.  Equipping communities in housing estates to re-use and recycle more, reduce fly tipping and improve their local environment. Visit www.repurpose.london for more information.

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Repurpose Moving Forward

2018 saw some fantastic results come in from our pilot furniture reuse project, which has now come to an end.

Looking ahead to 2019 and two of our hubs, The Loop Pembury in Hackney and The Loop Grahame Park in Barnet are still going strong after the initial 2 year pilot, with funding from other sources.

You can keep up to date with news from The Loop Pembury and The Loop Grahame Park via the website https://www.groundwork.org.uk/Sites/repurpose  

Thank you for following us!

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Chair Upcycling at SLT

Such a lovely Loop team meeting yesterday down at The Loop@SLT, down in Camberwell. Sarayu the SLT co-ordinator made scones and we ate them in brillant sunshine!

Plus we saw these amazing chairs that the Loop has upholstered for the community centre there. Look great and saved from landfill!

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DIY Taster Sessions at Andover

We had such a great day on Monday with our combined DIY taster session and our Take day. People picked up furniture for free as we were doing a spring clear out, so some great items found new homes.

Inside the community centre we had a DIY session plus a photography session - so lots of activity!

Thank you so much to everyone who came which includes staff, volunteers, participants and the support from the community centre staff. Lots of positive feedback so hope to be continuing with doing more workshops in the future.

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A new volunteer at The Loop @ Pembury

We really like using chalk paints at The Loop. This week, I've been working on a beautiful rocking chair that a resident has commisioned us to paint and Lee's started work on a battered old chair, which is also getting a makeover. Lisa Painter volunteered with us for the first time this week and brought a lot of enthusiasm and life to The Loop on Tuesday. Hopefully we'll be able to showcase some of her handiwork next week. Great surname! Good to have you on board.

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Good Gym at White City... Again!

A huge thank you to Anna and your Amazing team from GOODGYM!!!!..... Who have kindly helped the LOOP White City to reorganise our storage spaces again... We have collected so many amazing items of furniture for sale at affordable prices so please come to have a look......

Good Gym’s report: This week 13 of us run 3kms to The Loop in White City to help the lovely Alex sort 2 of the charity's storage garages and to deliver some leaflets to promote two upcoming charity days. The Loop is a fantastic furniture re-storing charity which reduces waste by re-purposing old furniture and then it sells this re-purposed furniture at a reduced rate to locals who may otherwise struggle to furnish their homes. They had had so many donations of furniture in the past few months that their storage areas had gotten a little cluttered(!), but as many hands make light work, we split into teams, emptied the storage areas, cleaned them and re-organised them so that they are much easier to manage. They will hopefully also give a great impression to the charity funders who are coming for a visit later this week to discuss continuing funding going forwards - fingers crossed for the team! A big high-five to our first-time runners this week: Perrin, Richard and Martine. And to the rest of you - well done on another speedy run and great task! After 3km run back to base and a quick warm-down, we were done for the evening. Another fantastic job done!

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Pop Up Shop at Cornwallis House

Joey, Andover Loop assistant went over to White City to visit and do a pop up shop outside Cornwallis House. She said she had a great day meeting the community as well as selling to estate residents spring sale prices.

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Busy days at The Loop @ Pembury

So much of our secondhand furniture has been snapped up recently we've had to call in some volunteers to help us get more upcycled furniture on the shopfloor.

Cat and Hayley spent the day with us today and have really helped us out. Cat picked four chairs to work on and has started to reupholster the seat covers.

Hayley picked a child's wooden buggy to work on and sanded away all the old varnish. Once it's painted this buggy is going to look great.

Meanwhile, Jules has begun a massive dining table makeover. Looking forward to seeing the finished results and finding new homes for all this furniture.

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Upholstery at Andover

Our volunteers- Susana, Jenny & Francesca - along with Joey, The Loop @ Andover’s Assistant, have all been very busy reupholstering a set of 6 dining chairs for a customer.  Will post photos once work is finished - in the meantime photos of working progress!! Hardest thing is getting the old tacs removed said Jenny and Joey!

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Let there be light!

Some highlights from the last few days....It took a big effort but we finally have two lit workshops in the garages at The Loop @ Pembury. We've one we're now using for all the sanding and repairs we do and the new one's solely for painting and varnishing. So much better! We can also accomodate more workshop helpers and there's less stepping on each other toes. 

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A VIP at Pembury

Councillor Feryal Demicri came to visit The Loop @ Pembury earlier this week.

Lee, Rebekah and Stephen explained to the councillor what the project is all about and gave her a tour of the garages.

The councillor has a special interest in environmental projects and so it was a great to have her come and see what a difference The Loop and Pembury residents are making.

It's an innovative project and there are very few others like it, so we're pretty sure the councillor went away feeling impressed.

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Firmdale at The Loop

A great big thank you to all the volunteers from Firmdale Hotels who spent the freezing cold day keeping active by helping out on our Repurpose Project on Grahame Park Estate!

The volunteers transformed chairs from unusable to beautiful by sanding, varnishing and upholstering; they sorted through 17 boxes of over 600 items of bric-a-brac; they listed valuable items for sale online; and they cleaned graffiti off 40 meters squared of shutters.

Thank you Firmdale - come back again soon!

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Bringing the Social Benefits of Re-use to Estate Residents

Shared lessons from the forefront of community enterprise

LIVE Q&A: Are you hoping to set up a similar project, or want to learn more? We will be hosting a Twitter Q&A on this project on Monday 23rd January. Send us your questions @groundworklon using #RepurposeLDN before 2pm Monday and our project leads will share their knowledge.

On Tuesday 17th January 2017, industry colleagues gathered on the Grahame Park Estate in Colindale to learn more about our EU project REPURPOSE. We shared lessons from the innovative project, which has launched re-use programmes on 5 social housing estates across the capital.

What is REPURPOSE? The REPURPOSE project supports residents to create community reuse enterprises on their housing estates. In collaboration with housing estates and councils across London, Groundwork’s REPURPOSE has transformed redundant spaces into reuse hubs for the collection, refurbishment and redistribution of unwanted, often fly-tipped furniture and electrical items. The established hubs are known as the Loops, and each Loop is complemented by an in-depth community engagement programme, helping to tackle the root causes of fly-tipping, encourage positive environmental action and deliver a host of social benefits via training, employment and volunteering opportunities.

This January Masterclass featured Site co-ordinator Andrea Naef lead a tour of Grahame Park Loop, introducing volunteers and staff Project lead Rebekah Phillips and partner LCRN’s Richard Featherstone delivered presentations on lessons learned, and how the estate has benefitted both socially and environmentally Local partner Genesis Homes shared their experience of the project Discussion of how similar projects could be set up on other estates An interactive session working through our new toolkit (to be launched in February) and laying the foundation for replication of the project in other areas

Watch the Masterclass

See parts two, three and four on our website.

Learn more

Are you hoping to set up a similar project, or want to hear more about how it worked? We will be hosting a Twitter Q&A on the project on Monday 23rd January. Send us your questions @groundworklon using #RepurposeLDN before 2pm Monday and our project leads will share their knowledge.

In addition, due to popular demand, a second Masterclass will be offered on the White City Estate in February 2017. To sign up or for more information, please contact [email protected].

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The Loops attend the London Upcycling Show - and resident Lorraine wins a prize

The Loop@Pembury and The Loop@Andover were thrilled to attend The London Upcycling Show at Walthamstow Assembly Hall on Wednesday 30th November - all part of  European Week for Waste Reduction 2016. Steve from The Loop@Pembury said: “We had great fun. It was a good chance to learn from upcyclers based in London. We took with us loads of chairs that Pembury residents had recently reupholstered for us. People were really impressed. We spoke to so many people and got so much encouragement!” Rachel, who runs the Loop based in Islington, drew a crowd with a decoupage workshop. Finally, Lorraine, a resident from one of the Loop estates, entered and won the Upcycling Competition! Lorraine had completely repurposed and upcycled a bedside cabinet into a children's play oven which then has a shut down lid to tidy away and become a sitting bench. The standard of the entries was extremely high and Lorraine won best in her category (cabinets) and then went on to win the overall competition. Many congratulations Lorraine for a very well deserved win - enjoy your prizes!

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The Loops take a tour of Veolia’s Recycling Depot in Southwark

Last Friday, Loop@Andover residents and some of the ladies from the Turkish, Kurdish , Cypriot group teamed up with Pembury and SLT Loop to have a tour around Veolia's recycling depot in Southwark . It was well worth a visit - very state of the art engineering and a massive space in which to process all our waste - be it general or recycling. After lunch, Sarayu put together a lovely upcycling activity to show the use of stencils and pyrography which can be upscaled and used on furniture . Thank you to all those who came and to Sarayu and Daniel for organising such a great day out!

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Good Gym at White City

Earlier this week we had an evening visit from GoodGym Hammersmith and Fulham who were absolutely amazing!

They ran to White City, emptied one of our garages full of junk and rubble and swept it all in about 45 minutes.

They are returning next week to paint it and then The Loop will have another storage facility to utilise.

We cannot say how grateful we are to Goodgym for their tremendous help and friendliness too!

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Introducing: Jules

Something I've been meaning to do for a while now is introduce Jules.

Jules started working with The Loop @ Pembury as a young trainee three weeks ago.

He's already a veteran of four chair reupholstery workshops and two corporate volunteering days.

He's mended drawers, painted stuff, vanished stuff, done furniture collections and been great company. A really good addition to the team.

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REPURPOSE Goes Regional on Inside Out London

Earlier this year, BBC London visited The Loop @ Grahame Park. On Monday 31st October, the REPURPOSE project appeared on Inside Out London as part of a feature about tackling waste culture in the capital.

The feature showed the team at The Loop @ Grahame Park carrying out a collection from a local resident, working on the item in the workshop and getting it ready to go into the shop where it will wait for a new home.

The full programme, including the feature on The Loops, can be viewed on BBC iPlayer until 30th November 2016.