Venturing into different creative pathways with Chris Barrett

Chris Barrett enjoyed an exciting career in photojournalism before starting up social enterprise thinkFOUND, a sustainable furniture design company that utilises reclaimed materials in London.

The enterprise also offers training and work experience opportunities to young people in the community, providing them with pathways into employment and experience in a creative industry. 

In this episode, Chris shares anecdotes from some of his amazing adventures taking photos around the world, as well as discussing the importance of reinventing yourself creatively.

Instagram handle: @thinkfound
thinkFOUND website: https://thinkfound.co.uk/ 

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Transcript

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Matt M: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Teach Inspire Create Podcast. I'm your host, Matt Moseley, Chief Examiner for Art and Design at UAL awarding. 

Each episode I speak to artists and creative industry leaders about three main themes, teaching, inspiring and creating. We talk about their experience of teaching and being taught, who or what inspires them, and we explore how they foster creativity in their work with the hope of showing you that there are infinite ways to be creative in the arts.

Today my guest is Chris Barrett. Chris is a photojournalist and founder of social enterprise, thinkFOUND, a furniture design company that makes tables and more from reclaimed materials in London. The enterprise also offers training and work experience to young people in the community. Chris has been on some amazing adventures around the world and reinvented himself creatively many times. I'm really excited to speak to him. 

There is a transcript available for this episode. Please click the link in the episode description so you can read as you listen.

Here we go.

I think we'll just jump straight in, and talk about thinkFOUND. 

Chris Barrett: Okay. So yeah, I run a social enterprise, not for profit, called thinkFOUND. Thinking, conscious of, found, found material. Right. We have a few social aims, social missions. The main thing that we do is create furniture made out with circle economy materials. So essentially kind of up cycling, recycling, reusing, mainly based in timber.

And we make tables and benches made to order. And we do this with individual customers, but also for commercial people, restaurants, cafes, delis, and we also do outside spacious planters, and outdoor seating areas.

It is a production line, bit of a factory, but we also work with at-risk youth, where we help them into pathways into employment. 

Matt M: How do the at-risk youth, how do they arrive at thinkFOUND? 

Chris Barrett: So we have open referrals. We're based in East London. [00:02:00] We work with lots of organizations such as grassroots community organizations. We have a close relationship to a community hub called Project Zero.

So they are a safe space. They're like a youth club that does VR, is a safe place for games and holidays that people come, they try and hook people up with careers, but they also signpost people such as sexual health or issues they might have at home or if they're getting into trouble. And we link with them quite a lot.

So it's a process where we know kids for up to 10 years. So we work with them a lot when youngsters are in the right mind, the right place, and they're looking for employment. So we kind of have a group of people that we can keep an eye on and then when they're ready, involved in what we do.

But we also work with youth offending teams. We work with Care Leavers, so with our council quite a lot, we work with them and they refer us, but it's kind of open, you know, anybody really. And we also have our pathways to employment. We have links to the creative industry and the construction industry.

Matt M: A not for profit [00:03:00] organization. what does that mean? 

Chris Barrett: So everything that we make profit wise gets reinvested. Yeah. So we either put on more programs or we buy more materials that we can use. So there is no surplus profit for us to pay big wages, things like that. Bonuses, all of that. Yeah. And take dividends and shares and stuff like that. So we have asset and wage locks.

So we're not a charity, but we're a social enterprise charity. The point being that we survive off trade and we want to make money. Yeah. We want to be a bit dirty capitalist. We want that profit, but everything gets reinvested into the social mission.

Matt M: Working with young people who are at risk must come with some challenges.

Chris Barrett: And some risks.

Matt M: Some risks, yeah, absolutely. So what, what are those risks?

Chris Barrett: It can be a myriad of things. So you've gotta be pretty headstrong. You've gotta be pretty relaxed. Cause you're dealing with youngsters who don't have a stake in society, have a lot going on with their life, have got a myriad of issues. And also you are a tiny, tiny [00:04:00] part of their life. They've got lots of other things going on. And more often than not, there's a big issue of mental health. So there's lots of things to navigate. 

This world of almost social care is a very loose world. It's a very underfunded world. So there's a lot of initiative on our part. And what we do is we set up programs, we do some beginning kind of vetting ones, so like a taster session. It always starts with a visit, come and see, so we get a feel for the individual after the form we've been given on them.

And then we induct them into like a very kind of hands off course, two days a week for like three weeks. So then we just get a feel for who they are and how they react to the environment because this is a workshop, it has got machines and has got some dangers involved, but that level of risk for at-risk people often is very positive in terms of, it gives this impression of we're not wrapping cotton wall around you. We're not from the teacher world or the probation team or anything else that's trying to be your friend and this and that. And that's [00:05:00] what service we are trying to provide, this leap to the working world, where a lot of the youngsters will get fired straight away cause they dunno how to act. Soft skills turning up.

Doing naughty things they shouldn't be doing. Yeah. So we don't try and make it obvious though I'm saying it out loud now that, they're welcome to come and fail with us and make their mistakes with us, but we present it as it's a working world. You've got three strikes, you're out. These are red lines.

When a youngster comes in, we fill out a questionnaire, to find the baseline where they're at and do some kind of loose almost psychological stuff with them about what is your aspiration? What issues do you see in society? Just to really uncover what the individual's like. And then we get to know who they are and we can talk as a team about how best to kind of tailor some mentoring to them.

Matt M: How do you manage being a business, you having customers and deadlines and standards of quality that you have to maintain and integrating the safe space and the opportunity to fail. Do they conflict with one another sometimes?

Chris Barrett: Definitely, and I'm still working that out.

Matt M: [00:06:00] Right.

Chris Barrett: It's an ongoing process. So I pour safeguards in place of obstacles like these taster sessions so I can vet and see where you're at rather than throw you in at the deep end. Come on, let's use machinery or do some hardwood tables that cost loads of money. So the materials that we use are quite forgiving.

So they can make their mistakes there. And we set up projects where the outcome doesn't really matter. And the beginning thing that we do is a basic putting a planter together, so it has an aesthetic. So we can get away if it doesn't look that great. But we vet and we teach them the process. There are stages for them and then they get to feel comfortable and supported so they're not thrown in at the deep end.

So there's certain safeguards that way, regards getting the product out there and it being a decent product. And because it's a factory, there are like workstations. They can do a load of sanding and be a part of the product that's built in the end, and have a say in it, but they're in kind of a safe element where their input, if they make a mistake, isn't that bad, that we can rectify it, but is still part of the [00:07:00] end product.

Matt M: And so for most of those people that come along to work with you, is this the first time that they've ever produced anything like this

Chris Barrett: Ever had a job, ever spoke to an adult that’s not a teacher or an authority figure. And these are older kids as well. A good age that we get for people when they're ready is around 23.

Matt M: Oh right, okay. 

Chris Barrett: So we get 16, 17, 18. But the maturity levels and their life experience cause they've not had jobs. Yeah. Like we're based in London, the competitiveness to get a job. Even the Saturday jobs, they don't exist. Um, and also as generally, uh, a country that we are, there aren't those jobs for those people. In London, it's competitive to get a McDonald's job or anything else. A Deliveroo job or, or anything really. So getting your foot in the door and having that experience of a working environment is so rare. So it's a real, really scary situation for youngsters to understand all the subtle things that you and me, from our backgrounds and educations and good people around us that have [00:08:00] taught us all the subtleties about how you approach 'em and how you talk to someone.

And then when you get in a professional world, how you write an email and how you do all that, which is almost all subconscious that we do. But these youngsters have not had any teaching and this is just a mystery to them. Right. So they're failing.

Matt M: So you’re just demystifying the, the adult world in many ways or what's perceived as the adult world.

I saw recently that obviously thinkFOUND were delivering some of your amazing planters to, uh, was it a local community center or a school when King Charles was in attendance.

Matt M: is that again part of the process for these at risk young people, is that seeing their work go back into their local community?

Chris Barrett: This works at a bigger level of regeneration, and all the regeneration that's going on around us. The council or whoever else decide to build something and do a development, it's an alien object that lands in the community. And then for everybody else who hasn't [00:09:00] got a vested interest in that, that's the target for antisocial behavior.

So it's key for the long term to stop any vandalism, to stop any other issues of segregation essentially, and gentrification that you involve people in the production or element of building this place, then people can take some ownership and that's what community's about.

Whereas if you land these foreign objects in that are unattainable, then the issues and ramifications for social upheaval are not good stuff.

Matt M: So this reintegration into the community is a big part of reestablishing this sense of self worth and self value?

Chris Barrett: Definitely. That's the key point, and this is the whole making process. You're making something, you physically made something that is a part of something you could maybe see every day, a planter on a seat or outdoor seating.

So you've got some vested interest there and you can see it. And that's an uplifting thing.

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Matt M: It's very clever, I think, how you've designed something which is achievable to be [00:10:00] made by these trainees that you're working with. But, I'd love to have one in my house, you know, they are a lovely object to have.

Chris Barrett: Then buy one, Matthew.

Matt M: I have been looking into buying one, Chris, I'm going to, but where was your starting point for thinking about products that you were gonna build?

Chris Barrett: The design start point is, we’re called thinkFOUND, think, conscious of and found, found material. So, it is what material can we constantly get that is around and that we can recycle.

So that start point was scaffold boards because they're up for so long on apartment buildings, developments, all that. And they've gotta come down for health and safety. So there's always a surplus of them going around. It's also very forgiving wood as well and has a rustic aesthetic. So it doesn't matter if it doesn't look incredible cause that's the aesthetic, that's farmhouse, rugged, rustic charm.

I think you probably get in lots of art communities and art and design, there is this hierarchy, isn't there? There is. It's hard to access and there's maybe shame of doing basic things [00:11:00] and not extravagant crafts.

But I think in the furniture world, this is where it lends itself really well. Cause it's about practicalities and function. Function and form. And simplicity is a style. So we work with the material and go, okay, what product can we then make out of it? So tables are very easy because they have a certain price point. They can be priced quite high, but what they are, they're just a tabletop and some legs. It's a very quick process, but you can sell that item for some price bracket depending on the material and the quality that you give.

So it's the most economically kind of quick thing to do, and low skilled thing to do.

Matt M: If something functions in the best possible way, then it is a beautiful design.

Chris Barrett: Yeah. We're both based in Waltham Forest, which is the home of William Morris. So he's our kind of start point for everything. This isn't just PR and spin, he really is the anchor to everything we do because he was a conservationist. He wanted to conserve the environment and the buildings around us and [00:12:00] that anchor to history and that we shouldn't destroy and have everything new, and form and function and beauty and all of the quotes that he's got about that, about having something in your house that you believe to be beautiful. But he was also a socialist. He was also a production line industrialist and had a conflict within him. But he was very conscious of his workers' rights, and the health and safety at a time of a lot of people dying in, in factories and whatnot. So he really is, he hits all those key things about what we're about. Think green, think social, think future, think found.

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Matt M: You had an interesting starting point, or when the idea first came to you for thinkFOUND, you were actually working as a photographer, weren't you?

Chris Barrett: Yeah. So I'd been a photojournalist. When thinkFOUND started getting successful, I was in Calais, taking photos of the refugee camps there and it was one of my last kind of jobs that I was doing. And whilst I was there, I was building homes for a charity called Homes for Winter. And as a photojournalist, what you do, it's [00:13:00] a bit of a tricky world, dark world in terms of you use people, so like I was going to make these homes for Homes for Winter to feel good about myself, but it's also your way in. You go and land yourself, you know the geography of a place. And when you are documenting people, being a photojournalist, your job is to be visibly invisible. 

So I was there working for an organization called Migration Museum there to document a camp, but I was also selling tables online on eBay. So I'd already approached the charity where I got some reclaimed scaffold boards from, and I started making a coffee table for myself. First of all, almost like a meditative thing because it is quite stressful being a photojournalist in terms of dealing with conflict, and documenting stories of social upheaval.

So it was one of my wind down things. So I'd made these coffee tables for myself and made extra cause friends wanted them. And then I thought, oh, can I sell these and make some money to subsidize my projects I work on? Cause the industry of photo journalism [00:14:00] was going down and down in terms of, finance from advertising, from technology leaps that we're having.

So it was quite ironic. I was kind of there with these people, lots of hardships and I'm getting these messages from eBay.

And this was the odd thing about Calais, like it was not far. I was like an hour and a half from London. And I'm dealing with these, the trauma of these people, people who've had miscarriages cause of the stress of trying, you know, escaping war and trying to get into the UK somehow. And then, yeah, all the stories that involved in that.

But then, I've got text from my partner going, what do you want for dinner? The modern world around photojournalism and documenting stories. If you turn those cameras around from those shots, you'll see a hoard of journalists, and this kind of world that we've gone into, this kind of fake news world, this kind of what we do with media and that truth, does it matter? Does it not matter? So it was on the cusp of those things happening, and this attachment to photojournalism was becoming very complicated.

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Matt M: You end up in [00:15:00] Calais photographically, but that's not where you started either, is it? You did a fine art degree. 

Chris Barrett: Yeah. So many years ago I did a fine art degree. And what happens there is you finish doing a fine art degree and you wonder what do I do with a fine art degree? And that can be quite a loaded question and quite an inactive period of your life. I studied Nottingham, did fine art, I did lots of conceptual work.

But it was always based in image and text and politics. And it harks back my background, which is a bit of a Catholic background. So there's lots of stuff around religion. And whenever you delve into religion and text and image, you soon arrive at propaganda.

My natural next step was kind of using these two things, which was a fine art degree and where is my visual narrative going? And I thought, let's go to North Korea cause we’re, we are talking about how you learn and how you understand the world. My learning and understanding of the world [00:16:00] was from a very small town or village even, documentaries through my television. So I’d seen a lot about North Korea and I thought, how on earth can this place exist?

It is extreme, is the opposite of everything we've taught about, but it has this kind of aesthetic, it has this visual language and it has these tools that are really obvious about texted image and propaganda. So all of this was fascinating and it turns out, you can use your degree to teach English abroad.

So I thought, might as well go there, see if that's all right. And how on earth you get into North Korea to see if it's ever possible to go in and see this place that I've seen through my television, which just seems bizarre.

Tricky, in terms of do you want to go there and what is your input and what's your presence gonna do? So those are interesting questions that I wanted to put myself in and they carry through to the nature of being a [00:17:00] documentary person in what ever field cause you are inserting yourself in a situation of your own fruition and you're there allegedly holding up a mirror to truth, but you've put yourself there and you are directing your camera, and you are editing your picture story, and then you're presenting it to a certain publication and it's getting image and text attached to it. So that whole thing fascinated me.

So off I went. I'm also massively dyslexic, so there's lots of South Korean dyslexic people out there now. So I went over there for about a year or two to see how you can get into North Korea. And then found out there was a British company actually that did tours. So I did a year and a half of teaching, got used to photographing South Korea and got used to the culture there and the history there, and then got a boat to China, then flew into North Korea on the trip for about 10 days and got a train out.

And documented that and documented North Korea, which was, yeah, an incredible experience and probably one of the closest places you can go to [00:18:00] time travel, in terms of going back. This place was, it's advanced, this was 2007. But it was like being frozen in time and just incredible, incredible in its bizarre nature. And it has a misty aesthetic as well because it's climate that it's got. So it's got this very visually interesting look to it all, anchored with a lot of horrendous stuff.

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Matt M: What do you take photos of? Where do you point your camera?

Chris Barrett: You're on a tour, you don't get much free range, if anything. So you go to hotels, you go on buses to see various things like the museums there, get shown like a shop. We went down to see the border from their perspective and hear the narrative that they speak about the injustices and what the whole battle is going on because it is still a conflict going on, though not active. There's no peace treaty in place. So you photograph the people, the kind of the waitresses, the landscape of it, the big squares that are there. 

Matt M: So then teaching comes to an [00:19:00] end in South Korea and at that point, most normal people get on a plane and fly home. But that's not what you did is it?

Chris Barrett: No. So me and a friend bought a car and then we drove back to the UK. So we put that car on a boat to Russia, and then you get used to what kind of journey you're on where lots of bribery is gonna take place and people wearing big hats. So yeah, me and a friend took, it was seven months, driving back to the UK. 

Matt M: You also raised money for Macmillan cancer support, didn't you at the time?

Chris Barrett: Yeah. Yeah. So my grandmother died cause of cancer and cancer's been rife our family. So did it for that. Yeah. We also raised money for UNICEF and Dyslexia Action cause I’m dyslexic.

Matt M: That's right. You did.

Chris Barrett: UNICEF was a bit cheeky though. We kind of did that because we were going into, it's not based on altruism, it’s because if you stick a UNICEF logo on your car, you can get protected quite a bit. So that was bit of a sly little plan. 

From South Korea on a boat, the car was, went to Vladivostok and that's around Siberia [00:20:00] and the east of Russia, which is fascinating.

And there's not much there in terms of when you're doing a journey to go to the next country, which is Mongolia. So there's all kind of tracks and roads. So it's a fascinating blend and you've got all kinds of interesting countries such as Turkmenistan, which is supposed to be, its tagline, well to us, is the North Korea of Central Asia. I remember going through to the border to that country and this hilarious visual dunno, escapade took place, kind of bribes being played. And then you can't just ask for bribes. The whole narrative and construct has to kind of unfold.

Matt M: Right, there's a lead in. There's a dance you have to do.

Chris Barrett: So me and a friend got took, took into a room and in and out these people came.

And it transpired that they were all asking each other for the code for the safe. Okay, so we have a translator with us who's guiding us, cause you've gotta be chaperoned through Turkmenistan, so we are getting this information led to us. So after, you know, about half an hour, someone knows the code for the safe, [00:21:00] they open up the safe and I manage to have a little look around and it's a big safe, big safe, right?

And it's just a little box in there and they pull out a Casio calculator and they treat this thing so sacredly, so sacredly and like…

Matt M: Like the one remaining Casio calculator.

Chris Barrett: Like this is odd, yeah. And this is odd, but they've made this silly little plastic thing into something so precious and one of the assistants comes and places it on the table almost as like this kind of religious icon.

And then they, I think a bartering goes on with our translator guide person about how much we're gonna pay, in terms of a tax, and then they're there putting in whatever formulas into this calculator. So now the calculator makes sense. They're calculating some kind of formula for the bribe, how much we're gonna pay them and be able to go further on our journey. 

Matt M: So, throughout this trip you are taking photographs?

Chris Barrett: Yeah, so the rationale was that. So after North Korea, I managed to get into the photojournalist world that way, because I went there and approached some newspapers and they published the stuff. The aim was to build a portfolio to see what stories are out there. So that's what I did. Yeah, documented some nomadic life in Mongolia. Russia, generally take pictures of the harsh living conditions that people living in around Siberia, and try and avoid people pointing guns at you.

Turkmenistan, that is visually crazy and that is known as, yeah, the North Korea of Central Asia. And that has a stunning kind of aesthetic to it all and, and stories. But you've gotta be careful because like North Korea, negative imagery, being careful where you point your camera is key.

But they have some odd things, like they have a big statue of their now ex-leader that rotated with the sun or as it was told to the people that the sun rotated around him, this big gold statue.

Matt M: That’s the narrative that the sun rotated around him? 

Chris Barrett: That's it. Yeah. There's a building I think for literacy, which is designed and looks like a massive book. So it's very [00:23:00] kid-like, almost Simpsons-like, someone in control. 

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Matt M: We may have some students listening to this who are interested in photojournalism as a potential career. Yeah. What, as a photographer, what would your advice be to them?

Chris Barrett: So it's all about building up your portfolio. I was very precious and I regret being how precious I was about understanding it is also a business. It is also a trade, so you've gotta go out there and take pictures and listen to them.

I wasn't great at editing. It took me a lot of years afterwards to edit my own pictures. And nowadays you've gotta be everything. You've gotta be the stills photographer, the videographer, the writer of the story, the researcher and the editor. So you really need to go out there in the world, study photo stories or just content [00:24:00] pieces of moving image. The best thing I could say is just go out there and think simple. Try not to, I was always guilty about getting the big issues and wanting to turn it into a gigantic project. 

Some of the most famous photo stories out there, or photojournalists, they focus on basic things like the village doctor, which is a very famous photo story in America where it was just this countryside doctor who would go out to the countryside and see patients. And the whole story was about that, about the Great Depression in America and what was going on, and just a snapshot of America at that time, but through just this village doctor going out and going to these people's houses and carrying out his activity.

So think attainable and small. In the UK we're very guilty about this, like it's very expensive to stay a hotel, or wherever. It's expensive to get a train. And I kind of think this is why the UK doesn't have a great coverage of like all the issues that have gone on and have just exploded in the last 20 years.

Definitely. Like it's really [00:25:00] poor how our own country is covered. And I'm guilty of it because what I did was I went to the foreign ‘oriental’ places and, and I use that word ironically. It is transcended from colonialism and ingrained in British culture that the other and the exotic kind of thing. But that's what media economically got you towards cause they would buy that stuff.

Matt M: So you say you're a photographer based in the UK, but there's almost a sense of creative responsibility to document your own environment first.

Chris Barrett: Yeah, well, I think you could do anything. Whatever gets you just clicking.

Matt M: In the conflict in Ukraine, immediately, there was a big push to support Ukrainian photographers and artists that were living there, and artists who maybe didn't produce image based work suddenly they felt it their responsibility to pick up a camera and start documenting that because that's their community.

Chris Barrett: This is such a loaded question and an age old one, because often it's good to be the foreigner, to [00:26:00] jump in and come from a different angle. If you're attached to it and you are Ukrainian, like emotionally, how would you deal with that? And where are you gonna point your camera at? There is no right answer here. It's difficult, and there's been organizations that have tried to do things.

I used to work for one called Majority World, which was a photo agency that tried to use photographers from the majority world, which was to say, not Western industrialized countries, to offer package stories to then push those into the media, but do it using photographers who were locally sourced and from those countries.

But the reality is that doesn't often succeed. And this is the dark nature of the industry, of people want what they want, and there's constraints around professionalism and time and foots in the door, it's quite hard to unpack.

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Matt M: You have a real sense of adventure, you seem to, and you have a real drive and a courage to put yourself in complicated or difficult positions. Was that about trying to make your photography stand out [00:27:00] to give yourself an identity in a competitive market?

Chris Barrett: Good question. I think the reality of this question is, is my skill set. I'm quite good at getting into the right level of trouble.

Matt M: That's very good advice. I like that. What's the right level of trouble?

Chris Barrett: That I could be here today talking about it, I think is the bar. Taking risks but having a healthy dose of, not paranoia, but awareness of not being too idiotic. 

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Matt M: I just wanted to move on a little bit to the dyslexia thing. You mentioned you grew up in a small town. How was school for you?

Chris Barrett: Not the best in terms of, it was fine, school was all right, but academically I was, I was awful.

So I failed art, though I later went on to study art. I really suffered, like with, yeah, anything textual bases, grades were really, really bad. Terrified about getting called on in class and having to speak. I [00:28:00] pulled sickies when we had like, assembly and stuff like that, like really not keen on anything that I had to do involving reading, like reading, scared the crap out of me.

So yeah, a lot of deep rooted fears there. And also I wasn't dyslexic in the sense of, my mum took me to these places to get diagnosed with dyslexia, but would never kind of verbalise it. So I went to all these after kind of school things to detect why is Chris not performing and, and not so much what's wrong with Chris, but what's wrong with Chris.

Matt M: You're a natural problem solver and sometimes when you, it feels like when people have, a learning support need like dyslexia, they have, they spend their life solving problems on the hoof all the time.

Chris Barrett: Yeah. And I'll hark back to defensive mechanisms and coping mechanisms. So I became the class clown at school. And I think dyslexics a good reading the other, [00:29:00] so I'm not focused on the page, but I'm focused on your expression and the mood of the room and reading people. And in photojournalism that helped and helped keep me safe. Right. Reading people. Dyslexia as well, the brain has trouble focusing.

So I think part of the reason I put myself in these difficult situations, conflict situations, that focuses my mind. I can do quite well in stressy situations because it, it boils it down to quite binary stuff for me. When there's a problem or an issue going on of a certain level of quick thinking, that things just become quite clear to me. When I've got everything open in a comfortable world, I do not know where to focus. I need some rules of engagement. I need some rules to kind of peg myself in to create a discipline for myself.

And dyslexia, it's a visual learner kind of thing. And this is what I'm doing with thinkFOUND, it's full of visual learners, for people who didn't succeed at school but haven't got that mechanism now of the DT room, of the resistant materials graphics workshop room, haven't got that. Whereas they would've found solace in those places, in these all [00:30:00] visual art rooms. But, schools are under lots of pressure, so those safe spaces aren't there for people. So that's what I'm trying to create with thinkFOUND. 

Matt M: Was there a teacher or someone who created the sort of safe space that you are creating for people now?

Chris Barrett: Loads. It is littered with people. My grandma and my granddad together, through their Christian lens, they would go and visit people in jail. And their belief was everybody is owed forgiveness and what do people do after they come out? So I had that around me. 

When I was uncovering my dyslexia, we had this old boy teacher come to our school and I think he was from private schools and he was a character, and for some reason they split our English class. And I was put in the top set. I was not top set material. I got to know this guy who, who was from the old school world of didn't teach the curriculum, taught his own thing, taught his Lord of the Flies and animated voices and kind of dark text and Kubla Khan [00:31:00] poetry and drugs entered the world and all of this outside material that he probably wasn't supposed to do.

But that was intriguing. That was incredible. That was enlightening. And then he became, cause I was getting diagnosed as dyslexic, there was some kind of budget for someone to help me. So my mum asked him to help me. So he offered this whole world and how he’d teach me and engage me, he twigged that he'd just bring in a newspaper and we go through the news and that was the thing that excited me was understanding politics and what are the dynamics of that. And just this other, and this outside of the world, outside of the tiny village, tiny school, tiny like town, that world that I was living in. 

Matt M: Are you using some of these teaching principles with the work that you do now?

Chris Barrett: thinkFOUND is a place where all of this life experience, I'm now putting into one thing.

I've done product design, I've done furniture design, all of that, at a low level, but I've been fingering all of these pies. I've laboured and I've been unemployed. It's all of these factors coming in and these external people around me who've helped other people. And that was the start point. 

And, [00:32:00] elephant in a room about this climate crisis, in our modern day world, we like to buy ourselves out of problems. And that's a very simplistic thing to do, but we're all guilty of it. So thinkFOUND almost outsources ethics, right? You buy our product, you're doing something nice for the environment, but we will do something with that money as well to help people, that you do like these people, our customers, they do wanna help people, but it's that mechanism, create the vehicle.

Matt M: You’ve got some statistics haven't you, about how many people?

Chris Barrett: We've probably helped up to date for about four years that we've been doing this, probably about 30 people, and we're at an established point now that we could do that in a year, of another 30 people. Help them through the various things that we do, through the taster session programs, the work experience where they literally make our products for three months and then we try and get in the construction world and do meantime community spaces and gardens where we get commission to do that. And then we have a pot of money we can then pay people to do things. So it's a proper pathway into employment. [00:33:00] And then what we do after that is we have these connections in the construction industry or set building and set design, stuff like that. Then we push people into those apprenticeship, which those companies are finding very hard to fill because a lot of people are so far from having access or being just ready for those jobs. 

Matt M: I think it's wonderful work. 

I wanted to lead into our provocation section. We always ask our guests to set some sort of provocation to our listeners. So it can be a call to action, it can be a task, it can be a recommendation, a thought. 

Chris Barrett: Sure. One of my own issues that I always found hard was I made every excuse under the sun not to do any output, to be productive. Like I was talking about, I found it very hard to get focused. So I kind of think one project to get going on is choose something that you do not care about, that you have maybe no interest in, but you have no other attachment to a [00:34:00] certain project. So go, if you're a photographer, go photograph something that does not interest you at all. And just explore that. If you're a fashion designer and you wanna make couture fashion, go and figure out how you make something for Primark on a budget. All the practicalities and things around that. Don't do that in your future, but this is good practice. Try and find your field of interest but something the polar opposite.

Matt M: So is this about comfort zones?

Chris Barrett: I think so. I think so. But also being disciplined. Cause I think if you detach yourself, you'll stop being precious about something and your output. And that's what I wish I would've done a lot more of when I was younger, which was try, and have that safe place as it were not to be scared about this output to get judged. So if you do something you don't really care about, then I think that frees you up no end, that you can then produce something and then you can throw it away and whatever. But you can explore it in depth quite a lot and all the elements that make [00:35:00] that up. And that's the whole point, is to explore elements of things that make things.

Matt M: Thank you to Chris for being such a wonderful guest. What particularly stood out for me is about his resilience and about his capability to put himself in uncomfortable situations and find a really fun and exciting way out. I think from listening to Chris, we can all agree that maintaining a strong sense of adventure and always looking for the next possibility is something which could be really stimulating to us creatively. So thank you, Chris. 

If you want to know more about Chris and about thinkFOUND, you can follow them on Instagram @thinkfound or check out their website www.thinkfound.co.uk.

You can find links to these in our episode description.

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