The National Emergencies Trust has provided £15,576 of match funding
SAVE OUR SEATS - SAVE THE CANVAS
London, Greater London, United Kingdom
Aim
SOS Help us ‘Save Our Seats’. We need to keep our doors open so we can continue supporting some of Tower Hamlets’ most vulnerable residents.
Since 2014 we’ve helped feed and nourish some of our community’s most vulnerable residents through our social enterprise. The pandemic has hit our business and community so hard, that we’re struggling to stay afloat.
Pre-pandemic, Brick Lane was the life-giving force of our business. It’s just twenty steps away from The Canvas Cafe’s doors, our social enterprise that’s been helping feed and nourish some of Tower Hamlets’ most vulnerable residents including the homeless and hard-up families. Tower Hamlets has the highest percentage of people living in poverty in the whole of London so those bums on seats and passing trade meant that every customer, in one way or another, supported vital work.
The horrible irony is that since the pandemic, we’re supporting 30% more people, but with nearly 60% less trade, in an increasingly punishing economic environment. We managed to get back on our feet after the first lockdown, but after Omicron and now rising prices and inflation, we find ourselves struggling to keep our doors open knowing that the need in our neighbourhood is growing daily, for the same reasons we find ourselves struggling.
HELP SAVE OUR SEATS
But we won’t give up yet, we can’t. Save Our Seats is a way for you to support The Canvas. Individuals or organisations can help us save all 76 of our seats, from the chairs in our cafe to the benches in our garden and will be thanked with a whole array of AMAZING Canvas thankyous from our signed ‘Double Helpings’ plates from Gilbert & George, prints from The Real Hackney Dave, to the delicious cake we make. We want to show you why we’re so proud of what we do, so you understand how we had so many bums on those seats in the first place.
With the whole country increasingly up against it, you’ll hear lots of stories like this over the coming months - what a heartbreaking state of affairs this is - so we cannot thank you enough for listening to ours. Monies raised will allow us to continue to support our community, and make it possible for us to rethink our business model in this new trading environment whilst still meeting urgent needs.
The Canvas is a small social business with a big heart, and we can’t let it be a victim of the pandemic. Since we opened in 2014, we’ve always said that humans are amazing, they just need the space to be so; The Canvas is that space.
This project successfully funded on 24th June 2022