Sunday night (14th April) was the night when Wonderstuff graced the screens of the nation doing our bit for Channel 4, Katie Piper and the Acumen Trust to help ex-offenders back into work. We’re sure you all tuned in and have read our earlier news post about our involvement in The Secret Millions, but if you’ve been hiding in a cave for the past few weeks we’ll fill you in.
Channel 4′s groundbreaking series, The Secret Millions sees The BIG Lottery Fund distributing £10-million pounds of public money to five charities and social enterprises, each working to solve some of the nations biggest issues. The five episodes sees a celebrity (Gok Wan, Katie Piper, George Clarke, Jimmy Doherty or Dave Fishwick) working with one organisation to investigate the impact of a proposed project, whilst also secretly reporting to The BIG Lottery Fund in an attempt to persuade them to provide funding for the project. The (so far entirely happy) results of these funding applications are then revealed at an evening celebrating the projects achievements.
As for our part in all of this, back in October we were called by Channel 4 who were after some graphic design based help for a suspiciously secretive furniture project. ‘Sure’ we said, and duly spent a day demanding flowers in our dressing room and extra curlers in our hair. At the end of the days filming we were set a brief, to design a bespoke piece of print for Katie Piper and The Secret Millions team to take down to London and use as part of their pitch in an attempt to get ‘Bench’ into high-end furniture stores. A busy weekend later and the hand-crafted piece of design was ready, celebrating the stories of the individuals and craftsmanship that went into the production of ‘Bench’. Happily, we know after last nights screening that the team were successful in their mission, securing interest from stockists and ultimately vital funding from The BIG Lottery Fund to make projects like this possible across the country. Everyone loves a happy ending.
Crucially for us, Sunday nights screening of The Secret Millions raised some fascinating issues around peoples preconceptions of offenders and ex-offenders and featured some incredible insights from the ever-inspiring Katie Piper. And whilst we may have only been on screen for a few short seconds (Paul’s ears and fingers were definitely deemed photogenic, his face apparently less so), we feel proud to have been part of such an amazing project.
