Blog
Seagulls "As seen on telly!" - Channel 4's Secret Millionaire
Thank you for your warm and positive responses to the programme which went out on Sunday (Nov 27th), it's been very inspiring. We had n't seen the programme before it was aired so were obviously a bit nervous, but well pleased with the finished programme. Thanks to all involved, to Charles, to everyone in it (Lee is quite the local celebrity now!) and everyone who has contacted us since.
If you missed it on Sunday you can find it here:
Winter Update
Summer seems to have been and gone in the blink of an eye and here in the paint store we are dusting down the thermals ready for the winter; we have been pretty lucky so far with the mild November weather.
A lot has been happening in the world of paint. In July Cat (one of Seagulls managers) added a new Chick to the nest in the form of a bouncing 10lb baby boy Samuel so congratulations to her and her partner Matt.
More and more people are seeing the sense in buying our quality, but much cheaper paint, and
the paint store has never been so busy. Over in Redecorate Ruksar has been passing on his skills to local people via a decorating course held in an empty Leeds Federated Housing property. Ruksar has also worked on a joint project with Bradford Artworks and Places for People,
teaching young people leaving care basic decorating, wallpapering and joinery skills. The course was very successfully received and we are aiming to offer more courses in 2012. Mosaic has also been busy, Angela has been working with children in various primary schools in Leeds to create
bright and beautiful mosaics for their schools; Angela also continues to work with the Teenage Cancer Trust at the LGI. Check out the mosaic page for photographs of recent works.
We can now finally reveal the exciting news we have been holding back for far too long!! Seagulls will be appearing in Channel 4’s Secret Millionaire programme on Sunday 27th November at 9pm. We had great fun filming the show; hopefully everyone else will find it entertaining, let us know what you think..................
Our New Website
Hello, so what do you think of the new website?
We’re very pleased with it. It has pretty much come out just as we had hoped (and just the right shade of pink!). Yes it has been a while in development and involved a bit of head scratching, bum scratching and general frustration. Our original site went up in 2006 and was pretty well received, but the navigation proved a bit tricky and it has gradually got a bit tired and dated. The new site is a big improvement.
Our Seagull and general pinkness have always proved very popular and do help to spread the paint reuse message. Be it on paint banks, websites, our van or natty cotton shopping bags (now available in store!). We’ve tried to be a bit different, fun and informative. And in a belated attempt to ‘get with it’ we’ve also started tweeting’ (@seagullspaint) and are assured we can now update our content easily without making a mess of things! Big thank yous to Colin at Viddy Creative for his ideas and enthusiasm; and to Bliss Systems for the ‘techie’ stuff and making it happen.
We really do want to know what you think (we are always keen to learn) so please drop us a line. What works and what could be improved? Are you finding what you need? Any ideas to make it more fun or interesting?
There’s more than paint at Seagulls...
Redecorate our painting and decorating service is doing well and keeping busy, Ruska, seagulls decorator, is fully booked up until the end of July. He will also be running two painting and decorating courses in June. The courses will be run in a Leeds Federated Housing property giving attendees a real life house situation to practise in. We will be looking for further venues to continue running the courses and hope to add further practical courses later in the year.
Mosaic, Seagulls Community arts programme, continues to flourish. In March this Year Angela completed a piece of work with young people from the Toller Youth cafe in Bradford, the Mosaic is now on display at the cafe on Duckworth Lane in Bradford, pop and have a look if you are in the area! Angela is currently working with The Teenage Cancer Trust at the Leeds General Infirmary; taking mosaic workshops to the wards and working with patients to create pieces such as a mosaic bench and wishing well for the hospital garden.
Alison has been busy creating a workable craft area in the Seagulls building. Alison can make the most incredible art and crafts from everyday items that many of us would consider to be waste. She will be passing on these skills to people during some workshops in the summer months. Keep your eye on our website and blog for dates.
Here comes the sun!
After a long and very cold winter
(there’s no heating in our building!) Seagulls staff and volunteers are all enjoying the warmer weather
(could do with some more sunshine though!)
The paint store is full and we are getting more and more new customers through the door, in the month of April we ‘rescued’ 7478kg of paint (that’s over 7 tonnes) that would have gone to landfill!! We are also now stocking paint brushes, rollers, white spirit etc so you can get everything you need all in one place.
Now that we have pigments (thanks Gemini Dispersions) we are able to mix all sorts of delicious ‘bespoke’ colours for our customers, it also means that we can change some of the more boring colours (namely salmon pink - does anyone like that colour?) into shades that customers will want to put on their walls.
The Shed, at the design base on Hazelwood drive Leeds 9, is now open for paint sales; we are open on Thursdays 11am – 2pm.
This month we will be saying goodbye to two of our volunteers, Faisal and Ahiyed, they have been with us for three months helping out with paint collections and in the paint store. Both have improved their English while being with us (which along with a reference was one of their volunteering aims) and have definitely learned a few choice Yorkshire phrases during their time with Seagulls! We will be sorry to see them go and wish them well in their search for employment.
Cat (one of Seagulls’ managers) has now gone on maternity leave . . . we will let you know when she pops!
We have a couple of events planned for this summer so watch this space for updates on what we are doing.