Handcrafted Projects works in Durham and Gateshead and the surrounding ex-mining villages providing activities for marginalised people which give a chance to learn social and vocational skills. Participants are people living chaotic lives, often due to a combination of mental ill health, drink and drugs. Others have become long term unemployed after 20-30 years of work and have no ‘modern’ skills to help them into alternative jobs: their situation has spiralled into family breakdown and homelessness. Handcrafted runs a woodwork workshop to give clients practical skills and to help them establish support networks. Engagement work also includes : a bike project, where clients learn to make a bike from scratch and repair old bikes for the community; a landscape gardening service; a women’s project, using catering training and a community café for women who have been in the criminal justice system. Trusthouse awarded a Major Revenue grant of £60,000 over three years towards salary costs.
Handcrafted Projects
