It all starts, Dan Northover explains, with a chopping board.
“Early on, we would get the offcuts of wood that other people were throwing out. We got people to plane those down and stick them together to make this really nice striped effect chopping board,” he told the Big Issue. “That’s still our day-one project that we get people doing.”
Northover founded Handcrafted, a charity empowering socially excluded individuals to gain skills and find housing.
The chopping board may be the “day one project” at the charity’s wood craft sessions – run regularly at its Durham, Gateshead and Chester le Street hubs – but from day-two, the world’s your (hand-carved) oyster.
Chairs, football tables, illustrated clocks, guitars, garden sculptures, skate ramps, a soap box racer; attendees have fashioned some “incredible” items.
“In our Gateshead workshop at the moment, one of our trainees is now using that same idea behind the chopping boards to make his own electric ukulele,” Northover says. “He’s wiring it up and everything… it’s great.”
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The charity was set up in 2011 to offer training in practical skills, but in 2014 moved into supported housing, purchasing derelict houses and renovating them for people experiencing homelessness. Its housing stock currently numbers 67, with an aim to reach 115 by 2025.
Carpentry-savvy trainees sometimes assist with the renovation itself, applying their newfound woodwork skills.
“It’s just so, so important for people to have that foundation of somewhere to live,” Northover says. “It is crucial that they have a safe place to call home.”
The demand is severe. In the North East, a total of 3,140 individuals were assessed presenting as homeless between January and March this year. A further 800 households were living in temporary accommodation.
Meanwhile, the region has a high percentage of empty homes, with around 50,000 homes not in use. Airbnb-type holiday lets and second homes are a contributing factor – but in many cases, the homes are simply derelict or unsuitable for habitation.
That’s where Handcrafted steps in.
“My favourite one that we’ve done is we converted an old pub in Gateshead,” Northover says. “It’s got a really lovely café, it’s got a kitchen, a plastic recycling project and four self-contained flats that people can live in.”
Incidentally, the trainee crafting the electric uke wants to join the café’s weekly music group.
“This area around the pub used to have a reputation as quite rough, beset by crime. You walk in on a Monday afternoon now and you see 30 people strumming ukuleles,” Northover says. “This area really didn’t need to be written off like that… when the positive opportunities open up, it’s not rough at all.”
Everyone is welcome at the hubs, which provide wraparound practical training, long-term support and advocacy, crafts and activities and community meals.
The clientele are varied. Some have experienced homelessness, while others are care-leavers or face social isolation – whoever you are, if you “want some company and activity and support”, Northover says, you’re welcome.
Ben – not his real name – found Handcrafted when he’d recently come out of prison. The charity’s woodworking sessions have become a lifeline.
“I was in a very dark place. I live away from my family, I have no friends and got very lonely,” he said. “It gets me out of the house, I’m meeting friendly people… I’m learning new skills – not just practical – but also helping me deal with my social anxiety. While I still have dark moments, for the most part they have been less intense.”
Keith started coming to the sessions in 2017. At the time, he was homeless and battling an alcohol addiction
“I went on one of the machines and I had no confidence whatsoever,” he remembers. “I was so low and drink was my solution, just to change the way I felt. I wanted company, but I wanted drink more than anything else.”
With the support of Handcrafted, he found Alcoholics Anonymous and found a secure place to live.
“Honestly, if it hadn’t been for [the charity], I wouldn’t be alive now,” he says.
Big Issue invest – the social investment arm of the Big Issue Group – have invested £251,000 in Handcrafted, helping the charity purchase and refit three residential properties. These now provide housing for four asylum seeker children.
The connection is appropriate, because the Big Issue was an early inspiration for Handcrafted.
“I was a student in Durham being part of this quite sort-of elitist university. But also living in the North East, seeing some of some of the hardest hit areas in the country. I was really struck by how stark the inequality is,” he recalls. “It was actually particularly through getting to know a couple of guys who were selling the Big Issue at the time and talking to them.”
In 2011 just “two or three” people would attend the charity’s woodworking sessions. Thirteen years later, and hundreds attend every week. But the ethos, Northwood says, is the same.
“it was just a simple idea of believing that people have more to offer, and getting alongside people doing practical things,” he says, “It’s really taken off.”
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