SLATE, the South Leeds charity that runs the Feel Good Furniture shops, marked its 20th anniversary with a party for staff, trainees, volunteers and friends yesterday (25 July 2024).
The social enterprise has gone from a small cash tin in a corner of the old Moor End adult training centre to seeing its offshoot Revive turning over £1.8m a year.
SLATE collects furniture, stopping it going to landfill, and offers it affordable prices to local families. It runs the Feel Good Furniture Shop on Low Road in Hunslet as well as another branch in Armley and a café in Gipton. It set up Revive in partnership with SVP (St Vincent’s) which now has shops at two household waste sites and is about to open its fifth shop in Hunslet.
But perhaps more importantly, SLATE provides training, employment and social interaction for adults with learning disabilities. Founder Frances Jones described the “desperate need that people with learning disabilities had to be able to make a contribution to society and to mix with different kinds of people” when she set up SLATE twenty years ago.
The Lord Mayor of Leeds, Cllr Abigail Marshall Katung, attended and made a point of greeting everyone individually. Opening the celebration, she said:
“Two decades of providing the service that you all do is just exceptional. On behalf of the council and the city we want to say thank you so much. I want to encourage each and every one of you to just keep on being you.”
Frances Jones, also spoke saying:
“It’s absolutely extraordinary that SLATE is still here and flourishing, just think how many tons of furniture have we saved from landfill over the last twenty years.
“I’m very proud of SLATE and the SLATE family and I’m delighted that it is going from strength to strength. Please keep doing what you do, making a difference, here’s to the next twenty years of SLATE.”
SLATE’s Director, Dave Firth, talked about how there was room for everybody in the SLATE family saying “never have I worked with such talented people.” He also thanked two “inspirational” women, founder and patron Frances Jones and his predecessor Louise Megson.
Cllr Ed Carlisle (Green, Hunslet & Riverside) a long time SLATE board member commented:
“Big thanks to every single person who’s played a part in the SLATE story these past 20 years. It’s a fantastic local success story for our community. It just shows what we can achieve when we innovate, and pursue good ideas, and work together to make them come alive. What new ideas for our community could we pursue now, to carry us through the next 20 years?”
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