The Social Business, #58
A special Black Friday bonus edition, with FREE DELIVERY
Stop buying so much rubbish.
This is the central message in Less - the excellent book from the man you might know from Sewing Bee, Patrick Grant.
I first came across Patrick in 2018 - as, like me (and at the same time as me as it happens) he studied at Leeds University - and was invited back to give a talk. It was one of those talks where you find yourself nodding along with every point made. Here’s a shorter version of what he said.
When I was at Zero Waste Leeds, we did some work with The RSA as part of their Regenerative Futures programme, looking at how we create a more sustainable, regenerative economy around clothing and textiles. You can read about all the work we did here.
That piece of work really got me interested in textiles - particularly because Leeds and West Yorkshire has such a strong textile heritage.
And through the project I got to know more about Community Clothing - the social enterprise set up by Patrick Grant in 2016.
It’s one of my favourite businesses - and I’m slowly building up a small collection of well-worn items of clothing from them.
Their focus is on well-made everyday items of clothing - not cheap, but also nowhere near as expensive as some of the premium brands that produce broadly similar pieces of clothing.
I’ve really liked their Blackburn not Black Friday campaign - and I love that they’re offering a vision of how the world of clothing and textiles (and business more broadly) could be a lot more people-and-planet-positive in the future.
New website
Alongside my 3-day-a-week employed role, I do some freelance work - focusing in particular on supporting social entrepreneurs, and on working with people to work out how we respond to the climate crisis. You can see examples of some recent work there too - and if you’d be interested in me working with you, please get in touch.
