Introducing....Tiger Showcases
Tiger Showcases tiger who lives in the basement at the Urban Rooms city centre hub
With masks selling like hot cakes, it’s no surprise that Toni’s Tigers have been flat out busy. What with making, delivering and joining forces with ‘Notts For The Love Of Scrubs’ by taking the reigns and becoming the main Nottingham hub, there’s been no time for much else lately…
Taking time out from a busy schedule for a quick photo opp, the, the socially distanced Tiger team.
PLEASE NOTE: Some of these Tiger volunteers live in the same household or social bubble, so not all photos show social distancing for this reason in the rest of the blog.
During the recent pandemic, the Tiger Community Enterprise became a vital hub in the heart of the city of Nottingham, UK, making essential items to deliver to those at risk across the county. Working alongside various groups and members of the community, the Tiger team continues to deliver its community interest projects; elevating & creating confidence, compassion and strength in those who join the Tiger family. Its legacy continues.
Team Tiger welcomes you…
TIGER SHOWCASES
An amazing team & community collective.
The team have been flat out creating essential items and scrubs becoming the hub for NFTLOS group, taking on the reigns to deliver across the county, with a lot of help from community volunteers and various groups. Go Tigers!
Organised chaos - the window at Carrington Street: many donations from members of the public, sewing groups and hubs across the county, ready to be sorted, and allocations made to various NHS establishments, amongst deliveries to many other places that need them.
2020 is tiger’s 7th year
Saturday 13th June saw Tiger Showcases celebrate their 7th birthday, although this year there’s been no time for any formal celebration other than sitting with their feet up for a few precious hours over a one day weekend before getting back on it with the scrub hub demands, amongst the other projects with the Co-operative that Toni is involved in.
With a team of 8-10 working at the hub, the heart of the operations now resides in the city centre at The Urban Rooms, 38 Carrington Street, Nottingham, NG1.
Toni guesstimates that across the county, there are approximately ten co-ordinating hubs, and out in the field, there are 250+ active volunteer sewers, and multiple drivers.
Since ‘lockdown’ it’s all been about scrubs, accessories and masks.
Usually, Tiger Showcases would be continuing with their textile workshops and food stalls, but they had to stop all face to face events and activities until further notice, having to diversify their offering to maintain funding for Tiger to keep going.
Stepping in for a local scrubs group and becoming the new central hub for now has meant that the Tigers are doing way more than what they did as a recycling project, but as a result of that more people have been engaging from the community, which is what Tiger is all about.
The pandemic has seen the focus shift for Tiger Showcases, to initialise the textile project to assist towards providing vital essential items. This is the current focus, however the aims of the project remain the same: learning, sharing skills, sewing, and crafting, bringing people together, which in turn builds confidence and self esteem. This has also helped those coping with loneliness during the pandemic, to help them feel closer to being a part of the community.
There have been a lot of volunteers involved in this project, and those in isolation, coming together with the recent project to help frontline workers has allowed Tiger to maintain their current community mantra:
‘Isolated but not alone’
Normally working with vulnerable groups, they are now supporting a wider vulnerable group. Helping people to help themselves, and now others too brings a great feeling of pride and achievement.
“It is truly circular, what we do” adds Toni.
This is Toni Jarvis of Tiger Showcases, who has been running this showcase of community projects, elevating the community in a number of ways over the last 7 years…
Here’s Toni introducing herself to the FTLOS group on Facebook during the pandemic and hub takeover, to all volunteer sewers and groups involved…
‘Well, it’s been a rollercoaster since we went into lockdown!
Hello, my name is Toni Jarvis and I am a director of Tiger Community Enterprise CIC. We run projects that support the community, whether that is bringing people together or sharing skills and building confidence.
I’m joining the admin team and leading the future of this community with Amy, the NFTLS group director and administrator, as Emma and Alaska (From Notts For The Love of Scrubs), step down.
Our first reaction to lockdown was to stop all of our community events to protect our vulnerable groups. Then we had to think about how we could best continue to support our community, whether that be online or in-person (2 metres apart!), particularly our recycling project Tiger Green Textiles.
It was at that point that I saw that the Nottingham – For the Love of Scrubs group had started. As a seamstress, I could just offer to make scrubs or as the director of a community enterprise, I could offer the services of our community group.
I sounded out a few of our ladies and contacted the group to offer our services on a slightly larger scale.
We normally live in the basement of 38 Carrington Street, however, I approached the managers of the Urban Room upstairs (which we use for workshops) to see if they minded us setting up the space for production under social distancing rules whilst the Urban Room was out of action. They were delighted that it could be used to support frontline workers, so that’s what we’ve done.
Our first task was to fulfil the request for 1500 headbands to take the pressure off the main group who were busy fulfilling smaller requests. I said yes and the relationship was born.
The FTLOS group have had wonderful volunteers coordinating a group that has grown from 0 to over 1700 in 5 weeks! They have been flat out and need a much-deserved rest.
We’ve had big shoes to fill so during the transition phase, the logistics of it all took some planning, for us to be able to use the Urban Room as a central hub and continue to supply (with the help of many volunteers), the makes requested from our front line workers over the coming weeks.
“WE STILL NEED YOU!” was the message from Tiger Showcases….
‘This is and will continue to be a group effort from you the fabulous community of Notts sewers, drivers, donators and supporters, we will just be helping to steer the boat and ensure every request for items is fulfilled and Amy and some of the mods team will be staying around to ensure things run smoothly in the background.’
Adapting and meeting expectations within the community: the Tiger Team’s roles have evolved during the pandemic to meet the requirements of becoming the main local hub, where logistics and coordination play a key role in this latest Tiger project. These boards provide some background knowledge of Tiger Showcases and their partnerships.
the tiger team
Toni Jarvis is a qualified Project Manager with 30 years of business expertise.
Along with fellow directors John Newton, Niall O'Hagan & Marielle Newton, they run Tiger Community Enterprise CIC.
The community enterprise was set up to support enterprise and assist individuals and organisations to grow.
‘Whilst we started with a focus on supporting local businesses and community organisations we have evolved to encompass the delivery of projects that support our core aims - to help people help themselves.
We work in conjunction with partners to offer the widest range of options to the community to enhance their own skills and opportunities.
Whether that be to build work skills to move along in their career path, showcase talents, or their business; to offer empowerment opportunities in the community to build confidence, communication and contacts, and to avoid social isolation. Also doing their bit for the planet through our recycling project.’
MEET THE TEAM!
Introducing...TIGER SHOWCASES!
During the recent pandemic, the Tiger Community Enterprise became a vital hub in the heart of the city of Nottingham, UK. Making essential items & taking the reigns from the 'Notts For The Love of Scrubs' group to deliver to those at risk across the county. Working alongside various groups and members of the community, the Tiger team continues to deliver its community interest projects; elevating & creating confidence, compassion and strength in those who join the Tiger family.
Its legacy continues. Team Tiger welcomes you…
Apologies to Niall and Tracylee where your contributions are blurred. It must be your beautiful faces that the camera cannot cope with! We didn't shoot these contributions again as you cannot always repeat what comes straight from the heart, and we're all about authenticity here, so please enjoy these particular contributions as they are, and listen to the words.
I’m often reminded that I’m a Jack of all trades and master of none, as the phrase goes. I have ideas and concepts and just go for it, sometimes forgetting my own inconsistencies with tech!
Since everyone else has contributed to saying how Tiger has helped them, I’ll add my little bit here too. One of the reasons for writing this blog was because Tiger has helped me during this time too. Offering a friendly space for some socially distanced human interaction has been really valuable to me as I live alone and my friends and family are not within walking distance. I don’t have a car to go anywhere else; and often go for weeks without seeing people due to a fluctuating health condition; so because the hub is very local to where I live in the city, I can walk a short distance when I feel up to it. To know their base is just around the corner for me means I can call in when I’m able to. Helping out even a little bit feels good and there is never any pressure at all. It’s a great supportive environment.
Something for the weekend: whether making my contribution at home or at the hub, using my hands and eyes in a different way has given me a kind of meditative and relaxing outlet, helping me to wind down after ThriftVIP work. Having a different purpose sometimes, is helpful. Knowing you’re helping others gives a warm fuzzy feeling too, so I’ve been grateful of this opportunity to get involved.
I’m not a great sewer, but it’s been good to make a small contribution. I persevered with sewing buttons onto headbands, often taking longer on styling up the colours and styles of buttons! I also wanted to do these beautifully made headbands justice. That was until I decided to utilise some of my other skills and platform in a different (and possibly better way), by writing this blog, and creating a video Tiger can use, to help promote what they do (discounting some of the technical problems with the amateur film, of course!)
For me it has given me some much needed human interaction in a friendly and encouraging environment. I also wanted to promote some of the unsung heroes in the community too, and Tiger is definitely one of those.
Tiger Showcases don’t have much extra time at the moment to do the promotion side of things, and it would have been a shame not to talk about what they do and big them up in this way as they’re still so busy with scrub fulfillments. With the website to constantly update too, with the new masks and accessories additions, it just felt right.
It’s been great observing the Tiger team at work, and how well they work together, despite all the extra stress they’ve been under with taking over as a hub. Alongside dealing with their own personal pressures too during the pandemic, they’ve managed to put their own problems aside to help to continue the focus on the local wider community, and that is very honourable indeed.
Props to you, Tigers.
The Man That Can: I also had the privilege of meeting John Pearson, one of the community hubs delivery people. He enjoys delivering those “People protecting items” as he calls them.
His bright outfits of choice come in the form of many different colourful and patterned scrubs uniforms, bringing a smile to the face of everyone who meets him. A real delight and a star of a delivery volunteer.
Tiger Dreams, Tiger Goals….
Looking to the future post Covid-19, Toni would like to get back to previous projects, including utilising the upstairs space again at the Urban Rooms one day a week, for community workshops, as it’s an ideal space and easily accessible for those using public transport.
Our real home is hidden in the basement! Toni proclaims about the adapted home upstairs at the Urban Rooms on Carrington Street being only a temporary measure during this current project.
“The first job would be inviting all volunteers in, over a period of time so they can find out more about what we do. We’ll be back to recycling and sustainable living projects.”
Toni is also keen to get the Street food stall up and running again as soon as possible as this was the main income generator for Tiger.
It also means that other funding options are in the pipeline, such as a work skills project aimed at younger people who have slipped through the net, to learn soft skills such as discipline, time-keeping and confidence, and to tie this in with work experience, for example, on the food stall and promoting the Tiger sanitary wear range, which is currently on hold.
“It’s about space too, as social distancing adds to the cost of this, so unless we can hire an accessible and affordable space, this would have to be delegated for the foreseeable.”
This is why having the upstairs space at the Urban Rooms has been so great as it’s made the current community project doable which means they’ve been able to take in deliveries and donations as well as utilise it as a proper work space and wow, have they made use of it!
Pay it forward with a mask!
buy one give one - click to get your mask plus that warm fuzzy feeling knowing you’re helping the wider community too. Ah, go on.
To purchase a mask or indeed any other sustainable living product from Tiger Showcases, visit their community store
Above: Just one of many products available. I bought these re-useable make-up pads and they’re great to use, really nice cotton.
get social with tiger
Thank you to all at the Tiger team for allowing me to film, and write about your amazing work and team efforts during the pandemic. Here’s to the future of Tiger continuing, thriving and making fantastic creations that continue to benefit people and planet.
Madeleine x