Groundwork

Groundwork takes practical action to create a fair and green future in which people, places, and nature thrive.

Groundwork received funding for their project 'CIRCLE', to run 20 upskilling workshops educating and empowering residents from deprived areas in north London to repair and reuse household furniture and textiles, rather than dispose of them. These workshops took place across two estates at their two well-established furniture reuse workshops, ‘the Loops’, on the Grahame Park estate in Barnet and the Pembury estate in Hackney. 

The aims of the project were to increase the confidence, capacity and skills of the local resident community to create and sustain positive behaviours into the future; enable residents to learn reuse skills who previously hadn’t thought that they would be able to participate; increase the number of bulky waste items diverted from landfill, compared to business-as-usual, creating a cleaner local environment, and establish a long-term behaviour change in community environmental behaviours relating to waste reduction (e.g. prevention of fly-tipping) and reuse. 

Overall, 20 workshops were successfully delivered through which 109 people were engaged of which 24 have progressed on longer term volunteering at the Loops. A total of 554 items were repaired and made available at low cost. 

For more information on the great work Groundwork do, please see their website.