ABOUT US
We are a social enterprise, established to suppport women who have experienced domestic abuse.
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Each of our flowers, transformed from recycled paper, helps to create positive social and environmental impact.
POWERED BY WOMEN
Page & Bloom is a social enterprise supporting women who have experienced domestic abuse. This means we are a profit making company, but our social purpose is central to everything we do and the majority of our profits are reinvested back into our work supporting women.
Over the last five years we have supported women in a number of ways:
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Jobs. We have employed women who are rebuilding their lives after domestic abuse, to make our lovely flowers. Most women work with us for around a year, some longer, and during their time at Page & Bloom we help them develop transferable skills that will help them in future jobs. In 2022 we created 6 jobs for survivors of abuse; our 2023 stats are coming soon!
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Training. We have run a training programme to help women build the skills to move into paid work. Delivered by Page & Bloom staff and specialists from our corporate and charity partners, the sessions cover transferable skills and practical advice to help with job hunting and settling into a new job. To date we have provided training for 19 women.
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Work experience. Many of the women we have trained have continued into paid work and volunteer work experience placements, to help them gain the first stepping stone into, or back into employment. Participants work alongside our team (either making flowers for sale or for donation to local charity partners), learning new skills and putting them into practice in the real world. At the end of the work experience, some people continue into jobs at Page & Bloom, while others move into employment elsewhere.
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In the current economic climate, we have unfortunately had to pause our training and work experience programme. We hope to be able to start it again in some form in the future. In the meantime, we continue to support women affected by domestic abuse by donating at least 50% of our annual profits to charities supporting survivors. We also run free flower making workshops for women's organisations to support wellbeing and creativity.
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HELPING THE ENVIRONMENT
All our flowers are made from recycled and salvaged materials. We save books, music and other paper that would otherwise end up in landfill, and transform them into our stunning floral displays. Not only does this reduce paper waste to landfill, but compared to cultivated cut flowers, our flowers also use far less water and carbon to produce. Did you know, for example, that to grow a single cultivated rose can take up to 5 litres of water and produce up to 2.9kg of CO2 emissions?
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We get our paper from different sources- some is donated to us from libraries, house clearances and other generous people. We also buy from car boot sales, charity shops and online second hand book sellers, focussing on books that may be damaged or otherwise difficult to sell for reading.
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We try to further reduce our environmental impact by minimising waste within our own production process. Off cuts of paper from our roses become petals for smaller blossoms, leftover card from making succulents become leaves for wedding bouquets, and so on. Most of what we can't re-use gets recycled, and we are always looking at the recycling bin in our studio and trying to work out how we can reduce what goes into it!
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We use packaging materials that are recycled and recyclable, so our bouquets are wrapped in brown paper, with ribbon made from recycled plastic bottles. We are also working hard to make sure the products we use in making the flowers are as kind as possible to the planet. We are gradually sourcing paints, glues and other materials to further reduce our environmental impact. This is one of our big goals for 2021, and we'll keep you posted on progress!
OUR SOCIAL IMPACT
To learn more about our social and environmental impact, and the our achievements to date. please take a look at our Social impact report 2022 and Our theory of change by clicking on the images below.
ABOUT OUR FLOWERS
We are often asked how are flowers are made. The process involves very few specialist tools- the magic happens with just wire, glue and a little bit of skill and imagination! Most of our makers have never made paper flowers before, and we teach them the basic skills in a few weeks.
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We use real flowers as our starting point, looking closely at the shape and texture, and then work backwards from there to create it from paper.
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These short films show you a glimpse of our talented staff making some of our favourite flowers!
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