Sustainable Art: Wild and Kind W
hat inspired you to start Wild and Kind? Like many social enterprises, Wild & Kind was born from a desire to create social change. In our case it was recognising the lack of safe spaces for people with marginalised gender identities that was really the catalyst behind everything. We began running free craft
We adore your transparency in your business, why do you believe this is so important? It’s just being honest, isn’t it. I think people really resonate with honesty and value being told the truth. One of the reasons we set up as an assetlocked Community Interest Company was so that people knew that although our goal is to
to meet and socialise, and we built the printing our social aims and it protects the company side of the organisation around this with an aim from corruption further down the line. I’m always of making these events sustainable. happy to talk with anyone about where we’re at How do you ensure sustainability in everything you create? We’ve always wanted to be as sustainable as we can be, right from the very start, and it’s something that we will keep working on as our company grows. We only use a handful of suppliers, offering only 100% organic or recycled garments, which in reality has held us back over the years in terms of the products we can offer. Growth has been slow in the early years because of this, but we’ve always valued people over
have nothing to hide. If anything, we hope that others mimic this way of operating. I also love how dedicated you are to helping creatives of all scales grow – why is this so close to your heart? I was once a start-up, testing the waters in the creative industry. I started making and selling
from art school. There are SO many things that I learned from making mistakes, and while that’s a great experience in itself, I’d really love to help where we would like to be, being an ethical, anyone who is struggling to navigate the ins and sustainable company is an evolving challenge, outs of making a living from their craft. Wild & but we just try to question everything that we Kind also really only exists because of my own do and the impact that we have on the people involved and the environment. opportunities that I have had, and the access to resources that has helped me generate income We love how community-driven you are, as that others haven’t and I want to make sure that being community-driven is very close to our we can give as many folks a leg up as we can! heart also. Why do you believe community is I believe that redistribution of wealth is key in so important? creating a more equal society, and my way of For us, community is everything. In fact the lack contributing has been building Wild & Kind. of physical spaces for folk to meet in Glasgow Your blog is such a wonderful read, where do you get your inspiration for it from? Our blog is written by the wonderful Kaye events to offer a safe space for people to feel Symington. Kaye is the co-founder of a a part of a community, but unfortunately the marketing company called ‘Paved with Gold’ pandemic hit a matter of weeks after opening. and she has been helping us tell the stories of Humans are social beings, and even before the pandemic we are seeing more and more people little tagline was ‘Promote - Support - Empower’ isolated and lonely for a variety of reasons. We so shouting about the people that we get to hope that once we can re-open safely that we work with is really something that we’re always can begin building research on how community- thinking about. driven spaces can impact the mental wellbeing of our community members and actively develop a model that can be rolled out further. 42
