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.
” 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.
These libraries and leisure centres .
