THE £1.7M
HAIRCUT The barbers helping clients open up about mental health.
L
osing a close friend to suicide was a huge shock for young barber Tom Chapman.
“I’d spoken to him two days before, he seemed OK. He was the first person close to me who’d been taken so young. His funeral ceremony was packed, yet he must have felt there was no-one to talk to. I found it very difficult to accept.” Tom wanted to pay tribute to his friend. With plenty of musician friends he contemplated a music event. But a year on he realised the answer was in his barber’s chair. In 2015 he got together with fellow barbers to create a look book and launched the Lions Barbers Collective, a group of barbers wanting to provide an outlet for men to open up about their mental health.
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“I realised that as barbers we spend hundreds of hours talking to men about all kinds, yet we don’t talk about how we’re feeling. We started telling men that we were there if they needed to talk – it was like a green light, they began to open up.”
We started telling men that we were there if they needed to talk.
Tom realised he’d struck a chord and the project has gone global. There’s now an app and a film on Amazon Prime (The £1.7 Million Haircut) documenting the rise of the movement. But there was no big plan, it happened organically. “The timing was massive. Hairdressing is the largest growth industry in the country as guys get into male grooming. Customer service and front of house contact is everything.” Tom realised early if he and his fellow barbers were to take on this vital role in suicide prevention they needed to be skilled to give the right advice at the right time. It had to be bespoke so he worked with academics to develop a dedicated training programme Barber Talk.
