Manchester Confidential - Benchmark Furniture Design & Build Profile

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Having an enduring mental health need can have severe implications on someone’s everyday life and can affect their employability given people’s prejudices and ignorance. And with 1 in 4 people suffering from a mental health condition, that leaves a potentially huge void in the working market.

It was this which inspired Ian Stewart to set up Benchmark Furniture Design and Build seven years ago. With a background as a cabinet maker he worked as a volunteer teaching furniture construction to people with mental health needs as part of an occupational therapy team.

“We had a lot of patients asking to do more than a morning or an afternoon a week which is all they were offered. And then we had loads of people saying “can you build us this, can you build us that?” So it was about merging those two to see if we could turn it into a business model,” says Ian.

And it seems to be working very well as Benchmark’s high quality work has graced a number of furniture environments ranging from Starbuck’s in Fallowfield to Channel 4 series Buried - “We did the prison furniture for the show,” Ian tells me.

Based in Withington Hospital, Benchmark is working towards becoming a sustainable social firm which can provide opportunities for full time paid employment for their members. They also offered a City & Guilds course to add further credibility to the skills they were already imparting to their members.

“We approached City & Guilds and asked them if we could run a course here and they checked our facilities and said it was fine. Of the 12 members who went through we got 4 distinctions, 5 credits and 1 pass and we were rated a ‘B’ out of A-E as a centre,” states Ian, proudly.

Unfortunately they have since parted company with City & Guilds and are currently looking for a new course to run to continue and build on the recent success of its members.

A link with Moss Side based charity Anchor Trust presents another opportunity for Benchmark members in the form of voluntary placements repairing homes of elderly people in order to gain experience which can help lead to full time paid work.

However it’s the flexibility of Benchmark’s repertoire that has allowed their popularity to grow as bespoke furniture designers. Graphic designer Phil Blinsten, who is also a patient, is responsible for a lot of the designs. And some of them are definitely out of the ordinary like a reptilian CD holder and the arachnid chair.

Ian explains: “We received a phone call three or four days before Christmas and were asked “Can you make a six foot gecko to take loads of CDs?” It’s just unusual things that make you think we can do this and this and this. So then we had the spider chair and we thought we could do a series of bugs.”
A gecko that size would make an impressive feature on any wall (and a novel way for storing CDs), but surely reclining in something resembling a large spider wouldn’t go down too well with arachnophobics.

“The spider chair is incredibly comfortable. It’s perfect for children in that position with their Playstation controllers. My kids absolutely want it in their rooms,” says Ian, reassuringly.

A lot of Benchmark’s work is hospital based and some of their biggest jobs have been for health related buildings.

“We did a reception desk for the First Lift Project at Charlestown Healthy Living Centre that had very strange angles but had to be flat packed like an Ikea piece. That was challenging job, it was designed by Taylor Young Architects and it put us onto the next level of shop fitting,” explains Ian.

Benchmark have worked with Taylor Young on a few projects and have done work for CTAC (Community Training Advisory Council) who do a lot of architectural work for community related projects and voluntary organisations.

“Before we started up we did a lot of research to check that it would beneficial and cost effective for the tax payer. From that point of view it’s all about working together as a team to produce the furniture,” says Ian

So for the future?

Ian concludes: “At the moment we’re in the process of becoming independent from Manchester Mental Health and Social Care Trust hopefully that’ll happen by March 2008. That would give us the freedom to branch out into much wider range of things.”
In the case of mental health there is a taboo about it unlike with any other medical condition and it is refreshing to see organisations like Benchmark making a difference to people and giving them the confidence to succeed.