The venture was started we question and challenge conventional thinking around ethics and sustainability in the cut-flower industry. We pride ourselves on a truly holistic approach that includes sourcing, floral donation and green waste disposal.
The aim is to effect a long-term transformation of the cut flower industry and people’s attitudes to flowers, through establishing the first ethical floristry franchise. We work in partnership with the Field Foundation, a charity that we established.

Thinking Flowers? was a finalist for the Precious Awards -Social Enterprise Business of the Year in 2011.

The issue (Why?)

Flowers are vital to humans, everything that fruits flowers . Something deep within us responds to the colours, shapes and fragrances of flowers. They enhance well-being. With an increasingly urban population globally, connecting to nature through flowers is becoming increasingly important. I love the way you have written this. But there’s a problem.

85% of the flowers sold in the UK come from abroad and of these come from Africa via Holland. Shipping flowers which are 80% water from one of the driest areas on the globe to a temperate area such as the UK, mainly by plane, has significant ecological implications. The workers are largely women and suffer from poor working conditions, includingexcessive use of pesticides. The local environment suffers because of soil degradation and the lowering of groundwater. In the UK, after the flowers have
been used they end up in landfill. Only [2%] of the UK flower market is currently labelled “ethical” (either fair trade or organic). You can see an animation here.

What we do

Our purpose is to ask questions and share answers to improve the cut flower
industry and act as flower custodians for the future generations. Our services are just like flowers make connections between corporates and communities offering direct supply chain. Such as our floral donation scheme allow corporates to share with charities, social enterprises and the community.

We promote a holistic approach to enterprise that includes people and planet as equals. We think questioning lies at the heart of learning and as an organisation we are open and accountable to questioning ourselves.

Our focus is:
- events;
- floral design courses; and
- bouquets

All services include consultation, floral donation and green waste disposal service.

Clients for our events have included: the Guardian, Times Eureka, Pricewaterhousecoopers, Tate Modern, Westminster Cathedral and Metropolitan Police and House of Commons, Deloitte and Clearly So.

Over the last 2 years we have delivered over 30 training sessions in flower essence therapies, mentoring and ethical floristry to our staff and customers alike.

In 2011, wanting to address the largest and most ethically challenged part of the UK flower market, we piloted (and sold out) a ‘Mother Earth’ bouquet range for Mothers day Thorntons Budgen’s in Belsize Park and Crouch End, North London.

The opportunity

We expect 2012 to be a landmark year for Thinking Flowers? After 8 years of experimenting and rich learning, we are ready to expand our services. We aim to run more events, expand our range of floral design courses and develop a range of bouquets for individual and small chains of supermarkets, building on our successful pilot from last year. And to celebrate the Olympic year we aim to launch creative campaigns to connect with corporations, charities and large social enterprises to get on their supplier lists. We will need to recruiting and training new staff.

In 2012 we finalised plans for the Field Foundation, which will promote sustainability through cross sector collaborations to create art installations and learning experiences. Our current research focus is exploring the role of creativity and Dyslexia in enterprise and the cultural industries.

About TF?

TF? was founded in 2008 by Lauren Craig, after 5 years of exploration into
the art and practice of floristry. She has been nominated for Honda Cultural Engineer and won number of awards and in 2011 was named Young Entrepreneur of the Year in the Precious Awards, and one of the One World Action’s 100 Unseen Powerful
Women who Change the World. 2010 Highly Commended in top 10 of Future100 Awards.

Also, in 2010 Thinking Flowers? found a new home at FIELD. This was a unique pop-up community retail space in Brixton Village. It was a pioneering collective entity that allowed for the creative development of not only the artists and designers involved but also the thousands of people who visited the space and interacted with the space and the community that supported it.

FIELD showcased artists, designers and Thinking Flowers? floral consultancy. We housed Lambeth Women;s Project events provided a launch pad for the Brixton Women’s Institute (BWI) and Flowers in a Tea Cup (FTC) and thus helped create a strong group of 40 + women working to serve local societal
needs. BWI members act as volunteers for Thinking Flowers? events and volunteers for creating peace gardens and flower growing.

For the future we will launching a Thinking Flowers? #LOVEis campaign for Valentines day.

For financial information please get in touch.
You can and images below and view past work here www.enterthefield.org, | www.facebook.com/pages/Field/253235312886 |www.thinkingflowers.com | www.facebook.com/thinkingflowers

The installations were called ‘Landscape of Social Fabric’. For the first one, we used bamboo because it’s one of the fastest growing plants and humans are also growing very rapidly. And it’s very dependent on water like us, and we used that to highlight that water scarcity is a very important environmental issue. We chose an English-grown orchid called Angel Light to symbolise the innovation that the Pioneers project will create and how we can learn from the plant kingdom, because orchids have evolved to live in symbiotic relationships and we believe corporate social responsibility should be a symbiotic relationship between corporations and social and environmental organisations. And within that we should learn to work together to create impacts that come naturally and support the ecosystem of business.

See the flowers in action in the video here…http://tiny.cc/ab1a4

The vase coverings were  made of a collection of hand-knitted pieces of wool and wire created by our associate artist Elizabeth Oniri, who is the director of Quilting Mafia – a knitting collective – and works in the education department at the V&A <HYPERLINK “http://oniri-onigiri.tumblr.com/”oniri-onigiri.tumblr.com/>. We also organized a floral donation through a referral from Lambeth Women’s Project so that the flowers from this event will go to Fighting Fear With Fashion at City Hall on 25 November, which is being organised by Mozaic Voices to raise awareness about violence against women and girls.

patch work social fabric but Elizabeth Oniri

The installations were called ‘Landscape of Social Fabric’. For the first one, we used bamboo because it’s one of the fastest growing plants and humans are also growing very rapidly. And it’s very dependent on water like us, and we used that to highlight that water scarcity is a very important environmental issue. We chose an English-grown orchid called Angel Light to symbolise the innovation that the Pioneers project will create and how we can learn from the plant kingdom, because orchids have evolved to live in symbiotic relationships and we believe corporate social responsibility should be a symbiotic relationship between corporations and social and environmental organisations. And within that we should learn to work together to create impacts that come naturally and support the ecosystem of business.

Bamboo + Angel Light Orchids

The other installation was made of a collection of hand-knitted pieces of wool and wire created by our associate artist Elizabeth Oniri, who is the director of Quilting Mafia – a knitting collective – and works in the education department at the V&A <HYPERLINK “http://oniri-onigiri.tumblr.com/”oniri-onigiri.tumblr.com/>. We also organized a floral donation through a referral from Lambeth Women’s Project so that the flowers from this event will go to Fighting Fear With Fashion at City Hall on 25 November, which is being organised by Mozaic Voices to raise awareness about violence against women and girls. See some of their designs here http://tiny.cc/ny9gc and the work of photographer Trevor Fogah-Griffiths

We’ve also been selected to launch a new way of banking. It’s an online crowdfunding platform called civilised money, which is a peer-to-peer or people-to-people funding, borrowing and investing platform (you can donate at  HYPERLINK “http://crowdfunding.civilisedmoney.co.uk/” <crowdfunding.civilisedmoney.co.uk/>).

Very late I know, but I’ve realised that there’s a whole world out there online and our obsession with people and plants hasn’t led us to engage with it yet, so we’re now on the hunt for collaborators and people who want to develop the Thinking Flowers? experience online. We’d like to become more present in that space and maximise the ability to share.

Beautiful change makers in business and community

Rioch is also a fellow with me on a programme called ‘Make a Wave’, which is female investment incubator created through a partnership between Oguntê and the Royal Society of Arts. They selected 12 women-run high-potential growth organizations to support and introduce to different types of investment. I’ve been able to look into venture philanthropy, look into investment through equity, funding and different types of revenue and potential income streams to support the growth of Thinking Flowers? It’s been an incredible experience and runs from September 2011 to February 2012.

I received an award the same day too as one of One World Action’s 100 Unseen Powerful Women who Change the World. It was a wonderful event, held at the King’s Fund. It was also their 22nd and final year so I got to hear a closing speech from Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow. And it was a chance to connect with inspiring women from all over the world doing phenomenal things.

Jose D'arby, Angelica Ball and Michael Underwood

On Sunday16 October I attended the Screen Nation Film and TV Awards for black British talent at the O2 arena. It was an amazing celebrity-attended event hosted by husband and wife team, Angellica Bell and Michael Underwood. We had created two bouquets, one for Angellica and the other for Josie d’Arby, Events Director.

We had the chance to have a chat with Top Boy stars Ashley Walters, Kano.

Film Producer of Dead Man Running Piki (who lived up to his name) and songtress Shingai from the Noisettes.

Image Taken by Nina Emett at www.fotodocument.orgImage Taken by Nina Emett at www.fotodocument.orgImage taken by Nina Emett at www.fotodocument.org

We received a very special commission from the Corporate Sustainability team 
at PwCwho have started a Centre for Social
Impact (CSI) for social entrepreneurs at the Fire Station on Tooley Street. The Fire Station brings together a unique combination of organisations including  the School for Social Entrepreneurs (SSE), 
, Social Enterprise UK and Brigade, which is a social enterprise restaurant 
and cook school.
The commission was for us to
 create two installations, four table arrangements to celebrate the launch of
the CSI plus a bouquet for the birthday of the
PwC Director of Corporate Sustainability, Bridget Jackson,
. The programme will support social enterprises, for examplein mapping their social
and environmental impact and using that to assess the amount of funding, finance and
support they need or could potentially gain and measure the ripple effects they have in
the community.
We then created a floral donation from that commission, which meant the flowers were
 shared between the Karibu Centre – a community initiative in Brixton that provides
educational support to people in the local area – and Lambeth Women’s Project, and
we were supported by Brixton Women’s Institute to collect and redistribute the flowers.
Elaine Holness, Director of the Karibu Centre, is also currently a student at the SSE,
so we created a whole closed loop whereby the SSE had invested in Elaine, Elaine had
invested in the community, PwC had invested in us and we then invested in Elaine.

“I really do believe dreams can come true. I see the mind as a factory where you can make your thoughts happen. I dreamt of working with the Eden Project and we now have a permanent installation there; I dreamt of meeting Wangari Maathai and I interviewed her for Wise Women; I dreamt of helping supermarkets change and we created an ethical bouquet range for Thorntons Budgen’s. I dream of a world where there is equity throughout the global cut flower supply chain, but for this change to happen, everyone must share  the dream… “

Lauren Craig

Please Vote for Thinking Flowers? here – http://tiny.cc/ityj0

1st Paper Print 3 cups

I was a little bit late this morning as I couldn’t find my camera charger. I rushed through the colourful streets of Brixton and there are people like ants working on Windrush Square.

I wondered into the Printworks and a few of the other ladies were already there making coffee and hanging ready books. I glimpse Dawn the tutor and we are ready start. We look at some of the examples of print techniques using binders such as opaque, pearl, puff and metallic which I will show you later. She introduced us to an artist called Norma Starszakowna

Diasporas, Norma Starszakowna, 2005, white silk organza, screen-printed pigments and heat reactives

http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/d/diasporas-hanging-textiles/ – Her current work has changed but still carries some of the accents such as metallic and Japanese feel. We also looked at Patrick Caulfield and his use of screen printing and colour.

Pottery 1969 - Patrick Caulfield

http://tiny.cc/eyxgg

I imagine these pots full of flowers. The remind me of the flower adorned vases the Bahian ladies wear on their heads during Candomeble ceremonies. These women walk, dance and sing in celebration with these flowers for miles and miles in the hot blazing sun. I sense this celebration in the aray of diversity in Caulfields collection vessels.

Festa do Bonfin 2011

There is not much to share today in the way practical print as using the binders is a pretty much the same ad the process you use to print on paper. Except with the binders they have different affects, and in order to get the colour you mix them with pigment.

Binder and Pigment

Transparent Pigment

Super White

Pearl Pigment

Opaque Pigment

Metallic Pigment

The only binder I did not use was the Puff. This gives a has a raising agent that is activated by the heat. It is kind of like the 1980′s kids illuminous T-shirts with the bumpy print. The texture feels great.  I will let you know how I have used the others as we go along.

Grey Puff Pigment - Diagonal Lines

What was strange was that after rushing over to the fabric shop in Alantic Road. I felt the urge to paint. I have never painted on fabric in my life. I went looking for a brush and grabbed the first colours that spoke to me and mixed the pigment… I painted straight on to the fabric just like in primary school.

Primary

After this you pop the fabric into dryer at about 140 degrees. As I had loaded up my brush thick with pigment it didn’t dry very well, so I put it through a few more times. Still not dry…hmmm this is probably why we use a screen Lauren I also realised the pigment cracks when you put it on heavy as you can see with the Yellow opaque binder and similarly with the Super White binder. However, the translucent binder did not and this was a bonus.

Next I waned to create a background that had dense colour and free space together. This time I used a screen

Can you spot the magic squidgy

Long Orbs Screen

Long Orbs

I was satisfied with this as the space in between the colour feels how I wanted it too. Although a little bit back to front I was ready to print on to fabric the stencils I made last week.

United Vibrations

Vibrant Cups

I had lots of fun printing those and love the way the colours ran together on the screen. There was a magic in the simple blends and the chemistry of colour expressing the delights they hold singly and foremost together. The little sees pods of Vibrant Cups, tickle me as they look like my freckly lips, a calabash and a leaf cupped up to the light and rain all at the same time. I especially like the greeny yellow one.  Going back to the way the colours run on the screen this started something else.

Layers

I started to see the screen as the first layer of a process. I quickly added some flicks, drips and licks it. The black added real dreamy depth. The sun must have come out from behind a cloud or something but the change in light made me look at the window. I wanted to see what if the screen could project. It actually did although I was not skillful enough to capture it without shadow.

Wire Flowers

I can here all the artists out there saying, ‘so, it’s just a screen’ but to me it is like stain glass for city dwellers, tape and chicken wire in all. Here is what it produced. I really like the horizontal lines and the blue drips.

Open

I got totally carried away with this and wen too far. I forgot about the space and totally submerged myself in colour, I’m not to sure about it. Brace yourself!

Psychadelic

I totally OD’ed man! I need the soothing calm of pastels colors, pearl and metallic binder, so I mixed them up .

Pigment & Dye

I for some reason could not stop thinking about the Thinking Flowers? and Angel Bug illustrations from last week. I had a block.

I need to figure out how to do it. I filed the thought and pushed on.

Allsorts3

Here is what the different binders look like.

White is 3 parts Translucent and 1 part SuperWhite.

Yellow is Opaque.

Blue 2 parts Opaque, 1 part SuperWhite

Pastel Blue – Pearl Binder

Pink – 3 parts Translucent and 1 part SuperWhite

Here are the last prints..

Over

Over - CU

I fell in love with this and let the screen dry just a little before applying another round..

Allsorts

I can’t wait to find out more ways to create texture..

Over Again

Over Again CU

So it was 5 o’clock and time to leave already! I didn’t even have lunch. I had a quick look round at the other ladies work and there are some real stunners! I have really enjoyed my amateur activities but will be leaving things to the experts.

I say, ‘ethical floral design’

‘what like print for curtains’ they say.

I’m used to it now and that includes the puzzled face after I do explain what it is, I actually do.

But, deep down I have always wanted to do something like surface design.

I am even guilty of trying to force my sisters down that line of inquiry.

They are both older than me, one a painter and jewellery designer the other studied Fashion and loves ceramics. They must be so tired of me saying, ‘go on sis it would be great! We could have the whole thing in house and I will do all the admin.’

Little did I know I would be on a course doing the printing myself. I was really nervous as I was a little bit ill prepared and had not read the intro email. So I arrive and smell the Peonies on the front desk. Faye asked me to sign in and help my self to tea and biscuits. My kind of place. I meet the other 7 ladies who are all from London and vary in age and ethnicity. We meet our tutor Dawn Dupree who is bright, chirpy and shows us some of her line drawing and illustrations. They are of everyday objects tooth brushes, shopping trolleys and bikes: their line full of character and humor.

We do the dreaded intro’s, inspiring ladies an architect, architect student, fashion stylist, fashion and beauty PR, lecturer and the rest students at CSM, Goldsmiths and UCL. I say something what turns into something else and quickly handed over to the next lady. We move to the course structure and by this time I am really excited about the possibilities.

We are let looses with tracing paper, pens, ink, opaque paint, pastels, brushes, photocopiers and computers ready to go with adobe suites loaded. I start with paper and fine line drawings. I stick with my usual doodles swirls, flowers, leaves and stems until it is time to reclaim the screen.

The screens have the ghost images of the person who printed on it before you. I found this very beautiful thing. Like being given a gift. When you look at them lined up, you have an exhibition of all the delight you could dream of. Some texts base pieces, geometric, illustration, collage and of course floral. But the aim of this part of the process is to remove the image. So after removing the brown tape that is used as a boarder, you are into the washing room, where you apply a remover and use a high power spray jet to remove images. It is pretty loud machine so you have to wear safety goggles and ear muffs. When it is clean you pop it in the dryer for a few minuets.

The next stage is to coat the screen with photosensitive emulsion that is the thickest glupy green.

At this point I marvel at the vast knowledge we have been able to acquire around the use of light.

Then it is back in the dryer again.

We were back at our desk to draw and come up with some ideas. I was totally absorbed and could not have been happier just drawing and thinking about simple ways to express big things. Print started to become a way to tell stories and the repeat the important bits. I decided I would use the, ‘Leaf Cup’ image at this stage. So I photocopied it on to tracing paper.

Everyone else chose their images and did a test exposure. The images are put into the vacuum pump, where air is sucked out from in between the screen and image, light is exposed to the photosensitive emulsion and burns around the image. The image has become a stencil and is nearly ready for printing.

So back to the wash room to ease the emulsion away from the screen with a hose and some elbow grease and pop it back in the dryer again.

I realised it is the predominantly black images that where making a statement and the more graphic, bold and brave you were the better.  You have to think of how things will translate in print. The positive and negative, light and dark and how things can be inverted.

There were many ideas …

Thinking Flowers?

Inky wind

Angel Bugs

20 Landscapes

3 leaves

9 winds

So with that many ideas I was slow to print, I got lost in books about Japanese Motifs and Pattern, repetition and yes you knew it the cushions. So we can test the print on paper next week. Looking forward!

We knew this was the right place and time to work with this greatly changing organisation and have dedicated our time with them to creating visual conversations about the growth, wealth and dedication, as we feel that reflects their contribution locally and world wide.

We wanted to understand the LPT offer so we sent our founder on a 5 day Introduction to Printed Textiles. She will be updating you as she spends her Saturdays exploring floral inspiration in print. We can just see it now, she will be thinking wallpaper and cushions by the end of it. In fact we are sure she already is.

In the meanwhile be sure to check http://londonprintworkstrust.wordpress.com/ – and check back in a few weeks for their new website.