Lets Talk Money

We operate as a Community Interest Company. That means we are a business, but not one built around extracting profit for shareholders or chasing endless growth for the sake of ‘profit’.

Any surplus goes straight back into the work. Back into tutors. Back into materials. Back into the projects that don’t make money but absolutely matter. Back into keeping heritage crafts alive in real, tangible ways.

We set prices. We want to talk about why and how. Because transparency matters to us. It’s not mysterious or ‘greedy’ or ‘bougie’ either. 

There’s a strange tension around heritage craft. People love the idea of it. The aesthetic. The romance. The woven basket in soft light. The hand-knitted jumper. The naturally dyed yarn hanging quietly in the sun.

When they see the price tag, it becomes “expensive.”

We keep coming back to this question:

People clearly see the value. Want the experience. Want the object. Want the connection. Get the story. But it’s not ‘affordable’.

Why is there a narrative that charities and community projects are expected to remain slightly impoverished? Always just about surviving. Subsidising. Is there an unspoken whisper that says, “If it’s ‘nice’ to do, it’s not real work”? If it’s not ‘real work’ how do you charge for it?

Or perhaps (we know budgets are tight for a lot of people) it’s how can I justify this spend on something ‘nice’ when I can get it cheaper & ‘the same’ elsewhere. I can buy from Temu, I can learn from YouTube…

Is it the same though?

When you learn from one of our tutors, you are not paying for their time in that session.

You are paying for the thousands of hours they spent getting good enough that you don’t have to make the same expensive mistakes. You are paying for the failed attempts. The ruined materials. The sore hands. The seasons of trial and error. The embodied knowledge that only time can build. Anyone with a ring light and WiFi can now be ‘an expert’…but are they?

You are also paying for what you save; in materials, in frustration, in wasted years, because someone else has already walked that path and is prepared to show you the way. Hands on. By your side.

That has value. And here is exactly how we price it.

The maths bit

We start with materials.

Willow that we have grown and nurtured on-site - planted, tended, cut (by hand & paid or exchanged for tuition for people to do that) soaked, graded. Wool purchased from local farmers and paid for at a fair price. Some spun by hand, some sent away to local mills & paid for. Silk ethically & sustainably sourced from producers who actively support their own local economies. We choose ecologically sound suppliers. Community-rooted suppliers. We buy recycled packaging. Compostable bags. We make decisions that keep money circulating in systems we believe in.

Those are not the cheapest options. They are the aligned options.

Then we add tutor time. Paid at a fair rate. No one here is getting rich. But they are being paid in a way that says: your skill matters. Your time matters. Your body matters. For employees we also pay into pension & tax/insurance contributions.

Then we add 20% for Naturally Useful.

That 20% covers the invisible mechanics of keeping this as an operating organism. Rent of our beautiful pole barn. Utilities. Insurance. Admin. Wood for the stove. The slow scaffolding that holds everything upright. Paying back people who have helped us when we’ve needed it. None of this is a secret. It’s all in our annual accounts, down to every last packet of biscuits.

It also subsidises the parts of our work that do not generate profit at all.

Our volunteer group. Our wellbeing projects. The seeds and vegetables in the garden that volunteers tend and harvest. The land-based sessions that don’t “pay for themselves” but quietly change lives.

Some of the most impactful work we do is not commercially viable. It exists because it matters.

The paid work makes that possible.

That’s it.

Materials (ethically sourced).

Fairly paid tutors (or makers for the products)

20% to keep the ecosystem alive and subsidise the work that serves the community.

So when we go out for less than that calculation, something pays the price.

And it is almost always the organisation.

Because we don’t cut tutor pay.

We don’t squeeze farmers.

We don’t force higher yields than the ground and plant can sustain.

We don’t downgrade materials.

We carry it.

And that is why we sometimes rely on grant funding to run projects we believe in so deeply. Because we believe this space matters. We believe heritage craft matters. We believe land-based wellbeing matters. 

But we want to be self-sustaining.

We believe heritage craft is important enough to stand on its own feet.

Most of what we teach is plant-based. Fibre-based. Land-based. Animal-based. And as the plants teach us ‘nothing blooms all year’. We too have feast and famine times. What was once necessary survival skill is now labelled an “expensive hobby.” What was once everyday (slow seasonal growth, harvest, preparation, process) is now ‘niche.’ We used to grow fibre. Spin it. Weave it. Mend it. Wear it. Pass it down. Now we expect a finished item to cost less than a takeaway.

Cheap is never really cheap. If something costs very little, someone somewhere in the chain has absorbed the loss. A farmer. A worker paid survival wages. A landscape stripped of nutrients. Biodiversity sacrificed. Animals intensively farmed. Synthetic fibres replacing wool, those convenient microplastics now found in every living thing on earth.

Wool ‘seems’ expensive. And yet sheep farmers have, in recent years, burned fleeces because they were worth less than the cost of taking them to market. One to two years to grow a fleece. An hour to shear. Days to process. Days more if dyed. Weeks to knit by hand.

Machinery shortened the timeline. Prices dropped. But where did the money go?

Upwards.

Not to the farmer. Not to the mill worker. Not to the loom operator.

Upwards.

That is not the system we are replicating. We are trying to keep money local. Keep value where value is created. Keep skill viable. Keep land respected.

We recognise the irony and privilege in even being able to have this conversation. To be safe enough to consider weaving as wellbeing. To call art a job. To set prices at all. Our pricing does not fully reflect the true value. It is a compromise between accessibility and survival. 

We are not seeking excess. We are seeking sustainability.

How much is ‘too much’ to change your life?

What price to put on learning a skill that could alter the trajectory of who you are and how you live?

You could come on a residency and learn something you then monetise. Something you then teach. Something that ripples outward into your family, your community, your future. What is the price of that?

We live in a culture that will spend freely on fleeting things. But hesitate when it comes to investing in embodied skill. In land-based knowledge. In something that roots you.

Ultimately

We are not trying to stand between you and the thing you want to do. We want you to do it too. But we cannot make it artificially cheap. Because when something is cheap, someone, somewhere, is paying the price.

In a system that often makes us feel powerless, there is one real power we still hold:

How we spend our money. How we spend our time. How we spend our attention.

That is value in action.

So if you believe heritage craft matters. If you believe these skills deserve to live you can show us. Come on a course. Book a residency. Invest in the work. Shop local and or sustainable.

Heritage craft has value. Not just aesthetic value. Real, living, economic, ecological, social value.

If we don’t price it accordingly, we quietly agree that it doesn’t matter. And it does. More than ever.