One Year Later: 13 things we're proud of on our first Birthday!

Holy moly, we’ve hardly had a chance to stop for breath in the last year! It’s certainly been a wild ride - a whirlwind if you like. 

But we’re trying to get better at reflection. At stopping and counting our chickens. So if it isn’t too self-indulgent, we thought we could create a list of our 13 favourite moments in a year of milestones, things we’re proud of and stuff we couldn’t have achieved without our wonderful customers, cheering us on from pillar to post from day dot. 

1. We won the Best High Street Shop Award with Holly Tucker - literally the lifeline that kept us going at Cabot Circus - both emotionally and financially. 
2. We’ve been finalists for 3 other awesome awards
3. We’ve been featured in so much national press! Thanks to The Guardian, The Independent, and The Times to name a few - shoutout to PR Dispatch for giving us the toolkit to pitch to these amazing national publications.
4. We became an accredited Living Wage Employer
5. We are an advocate for the Bristol Good Employment Charter
6. We’ve brought the work of 150 independent artists to the heart of fast retail 
7. We are the only female-founded, female-led and truly sustainable design shop supporting small UK businesses in an arena of 120 huge corporate chains
8. We’ve established, grown and developed a business through Brexit, a pandemic and and now an energy crisis 
9. We’ve worked with the government to provide three permanent jobs for 16-24 year olds on Universal Credit 
10. We have hosted four work experience students 
11. We’ve created permanent contracted jobs for 9 incredible local people
12. As a Not For Profit we’ve supported events for positive change and have run a number of free events and workshops for the community and specific vulnerable adult groups 
13. We’ve created a creative hub in Bristol’s City Centre for artists and facilitators to run workshops and events exhibiting their beautiful work

Phew!!!

So here’s to our second year - as we find our feet in a world that looks (astonishingly) different to the one we started out in - as we continue to adapt and innovate and advocate for makers and artists and sustainability and all the good things that make it feel worth it, we want to say thank you. Thank you for your support. Thank you for your time. And thank you for voting with your money. It really does mean the world. 

Year 2: bring it on!