Plymouth Scrapstore
Organisation Bio
Plymouth Scrapstore is “the home of playful creativity - saving waste from landfill, turning it into loveliness”. The Scrapstore emerged as one of many projects within Plymouth Play Association, a play infrastructure body, set up 30 years ago.
The success of Plymouth Scrapstore has been its ability to respond to the changing and emerging needs of its community, whilst retaining a core offer of Scrap – workshops – resource hire, that is affordable and accessible across our many communities.
During and after Covid we added new strands of delivering our mission - our bag and box project - all made possible by a superb volunteer team. In 2011, we became a CIC claiming our ‘social enterprise’ status, giving the Scrapstore a new lease of life. It had always been embedded in the community, living a modest life, never shouting about its story or what it did. Now things have changed, and many more people and partner organisations know us.
Our audiences are many and varied - as well as geographic (door step and travel to work zone), students, artists, crafters, makers, play workers, community projects and bigger voluntary organisations and public sector departments, as well as social enterprises and small businesses ALL serving people.
Plymouth Scrapstore works with and helps others (individuals, community groups and strategic partners) to participate in creative activities they may not have had the skills, courage or resources to try before. Our ethos is founded on the 5R’s - reduce, reuse, recycle, repair and refuse, as well as honesty, inclusivity and collaboration. Our strength lies in our ability to change, to listen, and to respond to what we see and hear as both identified and hidden need.
Product/Services
What we provide
We save resources from being wasted by collecting them from others and sharing them on.
- Affordable and accessible resources for playful creativity art, craft and play.
- Things for upcycling, remaking, improving
- You name it we have it!
Accreditations
About our climate journey
We had a student work with us to try and map our carbon journey. We found that because of the nature of our resources, whilst it might be easy for those who donate to us, it was almost impossible for us to monitor.
