Why making things matters more than ever

Walk into the Scrapstore on an open day and you’ll see something you don’t see much any more: people of every age, heads down, completely absorbed in what their hands are doing. A nursery worker weighing up two rolls of ribbon. A student filling a bag with foam offcuts for a model. Two volunteers arguing happily about which buttons are the best buttons.

We’ve been rescuing materials in Tooting since 1988. In that time the world has changed more than the store has, and we think that’s exactly why the store matters.

Making is good for people, and everyone already knows it

You don’t need us to tell you that making things by hand is good for you. Most people feel it. Time slows down. The problem in front of you is a real one, with real materials, and it’s solvable. Whatever the day did to you fades a little while you work out how to attach a bottle top to a cardboard tube.

One of our members, a home-educating parent, put it better than we can. She wrote that our shelves gave her children “the freedom to experiment” and helped them explore textiles, engineering, 3D modelling and crafts “that we could never have afforded otherwise”. Her son went on to a college place in 3D design. That’s what a box of rescued materials can start.

Affordable is the whole point

Creativity has quietly become expensive. A single visit to a craft shop can cost more than a family’s weekly budget allows, and schools feel it hardest: materials lists get cut, and teachers make do. Our answer is simple. Everything on our shelves has been rescued from businesses that would otherwise have thrown it away, so we can sell it to members for very little. Rescued materials are what make the creativity affordable, and the creativity is what makes rescuing them worthwhile.

The unexpected is part of it

Nobody comes to a scrapstore for a tidy, predictable shop. You come to find the thing you didn’t know you needed: a roll of unusual card, a bag of wooden shapes, a crate of fabric from a theatre production. That surprise is where new ideas come from. Our members tell us it’s like Christmas every time.

Come and make something

If you’re a family, a teacher, a student, an artist or simply someone who misses using their hands, membership takes a few minutes online and costs less than a couple of craft-shop visits a year. Come and see what’s on the shelves this week.