Fabric of the Land: The Cutty Sark Wool Experience

Fabric of the Land: The Cutty Sark Wool Experience weaves together the ship's history with a modern story of wool, design, and innovation.

Enjoy after-hours access to the legendary tea clipper, experience the immersive Cutty Sark Soundscape, and enjoy an exclusive screening of Paul Wyatt's documentary Fabric of the Land: The Untold Yarn.

The celebration continues with a post-film Q&A, drinks, and live music. The event will now be held in October, along with Ella’s weaving workshops, we will update this page as soon as we have more information.

Visit Royal Museums Greenwich for tickets!

_a room within a room - Elite Design Awards 2025

Elite Arts and Crafts Award

_a room within a room - Elite Design Awards 2025

February 23, 2025

For its 8th edition, the prestigious Elite Design Awards, organised by Maison Elite, celebrate the emblematic "Arts and Crafts" movement. Ella Doran and Rachel Forster are proud to announce they have won the 3rd prize in the Elite Design Awards 2025 for their bed design.

Their design merges commodity with a reverence for nature and longevity. Inspired by Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Hill House in Glasgow, it is a modern interpretation of the movement’s ethos: utility meets beauty. Every element reflects function and form, creating a sanctuary—a privy chamber for the soul; a room within a room. Read More

Meticulously crafted from the finest English oak, our bed combines timeless mortise-and-tenon joinery with the elegant artistry of Arts and Crafts-inspired reed weaving. The headboard is designed for both style and functionality,

offering a comfortable cushioned surface for reading or working in bed. The elegant hanging light shade can be adjusted or dimmed as required, from the thoughtful storage behind the headboard, which integrates built-in compartments for books, light control, and charging points, easily accessed from either side of the bed.

Front _a room with a view bed, designed by Ella Doran and Rachel Forster

Now House interview with Ella Doran.

Episode 8: ELLA DORAN DESIGN

‘It’s not often the opportunity to take part in an insightful and inspiring conversation with one of the UK's most innovative contemporary artists and designers arises, but that's exactly what happened when NOWHOUSE.uk podcast presenter Chris Billinghurst and guest host Elizabeth Knowles met with Ella Doran of Ella Doran Design.’

Read More

Ella is a renowned product and textile designer, mark-maker,, artist and photographer. Inspired by nature, wellbeing and sustainability, she has had an impressive twenty-five year plus career. Her highly-acclaimed homeware and furniture collections have appeared at Heals, John Lewis and the Conran shop, she has curated award-winning exhibitions for the TATE, The Glasgow School of Art and The Southback Centre and has accumulated an enviable list of clients ranging from the NHS and Habitat to Portmeirion Potteries and Paloma Picasso. Ella is also currently a Platform Associate Leader, SuperMatter Platform for the Interior Design MA course at the Royal College of Art and is based at her studio in East London. 

Watch on YouTube here!

Show notes:

Websites:

• The King's Trust (formerly The Princes Trust): www.kingstrust.org.uk

• Bristol Waldorf School: www.bristolwaldorfschool.org

• Yorkshire Sculpture Park Project: www.ysp.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/past-exhibitions/ella-doran-sheep-to-seat-fleece-to-floor

• Camira Fabrics: www.camirafabrics.com

• Clean-Up Camo Chair: www.elladorandesign.co.uk/projects#/clean-up-plastic-camo-chair

• Urban Upholstery: www.urbanupholstery.com

• Kniterate: www.kniterate.com

• Royal London Hospital Children’s Wards: www.carolinebanks.co.uk/makers/ella-doran-for-barts-the-royal-london-hospital/

• John Radcliffe Hospital Buttefly Bereavement Ward: www.hospitalcharity.co.uk/news/butterfly-garden

Museum of the Home Yard Sale 2024

Museum of the Home

The much-loved Yard Sale returns on Sunday 1 December with a fantastic array of items, ranging from elegant homeware to unique studio clear-out bargains. Ella will be there with some ‘clear out bargains’ so be sure to get there early!

Reserve your early bird (exclusive preview ticket) here!

Read More

General entry starts at 10am on the day. Want to browse and get a first look ahead of the crowds? Visitors can book exclusive preview tickets to gain early access from 9am.

Tickets are now available for general access to the Yard Sale from 10am to 4pm on Sunday 1 December 2024. Get yours now at the early bird discounted rate.

Book general entry tickets here.

Visitors can book exclusive preview tickets to gain early entry at 9am on the day and be the first to browse and buy! Book early access tickets

Date: Sunday 1 December 2024

Time: 10am-4pm

Cost: £5-15

Location: Museum of the Home, 136 Kingsland Road, London E2 8EA.

Fabric of the Land: an exclusive screening at the Museum of the Home

For your free tickets visit the museum of the home (here)

 WOOL MONTH 2024

Please join me for an inspiring film screening and discussion on design, sustainability and textiles at the Museum of the Home in London this October. Read More

I'm excited that the next chapter is underway for the 'Fabric of Land' - the short film (with updates now a 20 minute film) by documentary filmmaker Paul Wyatt about my project at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, focusing on materials from the park; that of a naturally felled oak tree, and wool from the sheep that graze on their 500 acres of historic land.

The film highlights the importance of the circular economy in reducing waste and sustaining livelihoods and traditions. 

Following the screening, we'll be discussing climate action and shaping the future of design in a Q&A with Ewa Socha from the Museum.

Museum of the Home: 36 Kingsland Road, E2 8EA

Sunday 20th October 2pm to 3.30pm

 Reserve your seat here!

Hopeful Activism and Long Term Thinking

For tickets visit Equinox Wasing (here)

EQUINOX AT WASING 2024

20th – 22nd September.

I will be taking part in a workshop and panel discussion alongside my fellow Alexie Sommers from the URGE collective, Jeremy Whelehan, Wisdom Keepers and Nadeem Parera, Flock Together on Saturday 21st, 11 am - 12.30

Hopeful Activism and Long-term Thinking Read More

Alexie and I will host the discussion and collective workshop to develop our ability to move beyond the immediate and enable future generations to benefit from deeper, long-term thinking.

We’ll be taking inspiration from Ella Saltmarsh and The Long Time Project and grounding the group in meditation to start the session.

I’ve been contemplating what Hopeful Activism means and reading and listening to many great thinkers and writers, which I look forward to sharing on the 21st.

‘Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act.’

Rebecca Solnit ‘Hope in the Dark’

The weekend festival as a whole, promises to be a jubilant homage to nature's transition, as the vibrant hues of summer yield to the contemplative embrace of autumn. With the equinox marking the balance between light and darkness, there will be special guests Paul Stamets, Nitin Sawhney, Sam Lee, The Egg and to name a few…

Use code URGE15 for 15% off weekend tickets (here).

Equinox is a one-off fundraiser for the PAR Campaign & Earth Percent.

Think Global and Act Local for World Localisation Day with EETG Tue 25 JUN 2024 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Ella will be speaking at this event, along with Margaret Asare, owner of EyeLondon Opticians, and Ben Mackinnon, E5 Bakehouse.

The EETG is an alliance of small businesses working together on shared issues and values for the common good of the local community. Join us at the EETG event to celebrate 'World Localisation Day' for the Hackney Festival of Learning with this member panel discussion followed by a Q&A and time to meet fellow businesses and locals with delicious local food and drink from E5 Bakehouse!

World Localisation Day, is an annual celebration, convened by the international NGO Local Futures. Together community groups and grassroots networks are joining forces to raise awareness about the need for a global to local shift and to celebrate the worldwide localisation movement. A myriad of events and campaigns are hosted all over the world, not just on June 21 – the day itself, but throughout the whole month.

for tickets and further information, visit Ticketailor here.

Reuse with Ella Doran and Yodomo, as part of Hackney Sustainability Day, Saturday 29th June.

Join Ella Doran and Yodomo for a special one-off cushion-making workshop as part of Hackney Sustainability Day! Book your 30 minute slot here!

This is a subsidised event designed to inspire people to reuse materials that might otherwise go to waste.

The event will be hosted at Hackney City Hall service centre- follow signage to find us on the day.

It will be run by Ella Doran and Yodomo who will show the simple techniques you can use to reuse otherwise 'waste' materials. No prior sewing experience is required.

Ella Doran Design Ltd. is an interior and textile design practice in Hackney.

Yodomo is a social venture working to reduce textile waste emanating from the interior design industry through the redistribution of 'waste' materials to its maker community.

There are 16 places available in half-hour slots. Participants will come away with their own cushion cover and learn more about reusing materials if they want to continue making at home.

Slots will run all day from 11 am til 4 pm. Please select your slot time when booking tickets on Eventbrite Here.

Shadescape - a participatory research project in collaboration with London South Bank University

Earlier this year we partnered with London South Bank University to run a small participatory piece of research named SHADESCAPE, looking at a circular economy for textile-based shading products with a focus on the local economy.

I have been asking the question of how my company Ella Doran Design Ltd. could close the loop and gain more transparency through our supply chains and communicate end-of-life or ‘next life’ with our customer base, for our shading products. Deborah Andrews has been my mentor on several applications to support this research. Below is an outline of what we have achieved so far, thanks to LSBU’s support through an External Participatory and Collaborative grant.

We spoke and/or worked with ‘actors’ throughout the product life cycle, from traders of the base cloth to the printers and recyclers, re-makers, and consumers. The project itself also involved re-making workshops where participants learned to repair and or repurpose waste shading textiles, empowering them to contribute to solutions that sustain materials and keep them in use demonstrating a circular economy in action.

You can read the call to action that we sent to our customer base here.

Kristina was a participant in one of the workshops here remnant textiles are creatively compiled to make a curtain panel

Curtain making from remnant and pre-used textiles

London South Bank University supported the conduction and management of the research, the workshops, and the publishing of the report. Deborah Andrews particularly was the academic eye during the whole time guiding and mentoring the process with her experience and past related studies. Essential was the collaboration with my company and Yodomo who contributed with their community engagement and making space in Hackney Wick for the public re-making workshops.

We also had full support from Hackney Council which promoted Shadescape at their Summer 2023 Sustainability Day where Sophie of Yodomo and I ran cushion-making workshops using remnant and pre-used textiles with the local community. 

This research and the project pilot touched every point mapped on the journey around Circular Economy for textiles in the Shading Product Industry. The research was structured to better understand the common practices of the industry and the behaviours of consumers. Unfortunately, the industry participation was scarce, nevertheless, the three interviewed experts gave precious insights that will inform further investigations. In the future, engaging more suppliers, manufacturers, and waste management companies will be extremely important to tightly close the loop of this discourse. Talking with a couple of my suppliers, it emerged that they live in a stationary condition and are unable to drive the change, due to their scale especially as they are not the actual ‘producers of the raw textile’. Also, the recycler we spoke with confirmed that traders as well as consumers do not have alternatives to landfill when it comes to disposing of shading textiles, and institutions do not seem to put systems in place for that. Textile waste collectors, repurpose hubs, and recycling plants are still too rare.

An additional survey regarding housing may help identify new opportunities for further studies and implement the holistic approach carried out so far. This research also demonstrated that blinds and curtains are valued after their use, and that circular approaches like this pilot have foundations to be built on. Public engagement is clearly evident, and not to be underestimated but rather leveraged. The Shadescape project and survey demonstrated that people have a sincere interest in contributing to research and are eager to acquire skills to play their part in the circular economy. They also committed to donating fabrics and repurposing them during workshops where sustainability values and actions were shared. In turn, the participants felt empowered, confident, and able to continue repurposing fabrics in the future. Finally, this study generated an ecosystem by connecting different elements together adopting a systemic approach. It highlights the preconditions for a localised circular economy where shading textiles are collected from pre-and post-consumer waste streams to be regenerated into new products by and for skilled communities.

This can help not only Hackney but also other councils to meet their sustainability targets. To achieve a stronger, lasting, broader, and demonstrable impact, the study needs to expand and build on the foundations of this pilot. Here, environmental and social benefits start to be explored by offering a way to reduce the need for new resources, mitigating the textile production impact on land and by teaching people new skills while developing a sense of responsibility and control towards waste. However, to determine a more accurate social impact the study needs to be extended to a larger and more diverse audience. Moreover, some points are still necessary to generate a Circular Economy Template/Actions Guidelines and to further engage experts of the shading products industry, as well as citizens.

This text has been adapted from the report and conclusions of our first research project with London South Bank University.

This recent Guardian article clarifies the issue further with the dumping of textiles in Chile’s Atacama desert to a beach in Accra, Ghana, but it also sheds light on an exciting innovation with Renewcell which can and will begin to change some of this discourse through recycling used clothes, but there is still much work to be done!  

For those of you still curious I learned about Renewcell via watching the World Circular Textile Day held at  The Conduit the afternoon session can be watched here if you are interested. A wider question, one that was raised at this event, and one I have been grappling with in my own business for some years now, is Jason Hickel’s book and provocation of LESS is MORE… How can we manage this transition in essentially making ‘less’ whilst retaining a healthy system?

He neatly points out that ‘… It’s not growth that’s the problem, it’s growthism: the pursuit of growth for its own sake or for the sake of capital accumulation ‘

He also said “….once we are liberated from the growth imperative we will be free to focus on different kinds of innovations - innovations designed to improve human and ecological welfare, rather than innovations designed to speed up the rate of extraction and production

a statement that I and all at Shadescape wholeheartedly agree and believe we are advocating through the participatory work with Yodomo to empower and inspire creative solutions to shading products.

Participatory Project Lead Ella Doran

Academic Lead Deborah Andrews

Full report written by Daniele Di Paolo

Bridge Bench series: I + II

Bridge Bench: Multi Colour I

For this September’s London Design Festival 2023, I have collaborated with designer maker Blake Carlson Joshua. After meeting at the inaugural Material Matters Design show in 2022 where we were both exhibiting, we made a connection with our unconventional use of waste materials.

We made a plan to collaborate…

...a year on and that plan has come together through the co-creation of two benches.

The first bench extends the legacy of the waste paint from my Paint Drop project, only this time, as we had decided to work on a bench, the horizontal nature of the piece led me to drop and pour the paint from either side of the reclaimed Iroko, in order to balance the organic pattern and convergence of the waste paint with the handcrafted paper stones at either end.

Bridge Bench Multi Colour Series I - dimensions L 1860mm W 550mm H 460mm

Close up Bridge Bench I

Close up Joint: Paper/Wood/Paint

Bridge Bench Nude - dimensions L 1860mm W 550mm H 460mm


Blake and I were invited by Solid Floor earlier in the year to work with some of their offcuts and waste wood, as they are retailers and fitters of flooring. We chose some wood boards named Magma Etna and Blake also collected all of their office paper waste for the stones.

Blake’s Studio

Here, Solid Floor’s wood planks needed to be celebrated, so I chose to leave them in their original painted white and burnt finish, and rather than removing the groove of the second plank, I serendipitously filled it with a salvaged piece of brass that fitted like a glove. The paper stones have been moulded around salvaged fence posts and made by Blake here in his studio.

Re-create is an exhibition curated by Solid Floor for the London Design Festival, and Shoreditch Design Triangle. Many objects have been created from Solid Floor timbers by local designers. Solid Floor has been supplying and installing bespoke timber flooring for over twenty-five years. Acclaimed in equal measure for the variety and distinctiveness of its floors!

The exhibition’s objective is to make use of waste flooring material that would otherwise be thrown away, via new-designed objects that not only showcase the beauty of the different timber floors with their various textures and colours but also reveal the ingenuity of the designers themselves.

Bridge Bench Nude II

B.C. Joshua is London based (Minneapolis born) in his own words he likes exploring the material landscape in a hands-on way. His work aims to interrogate and question pre-conceived narratives using a material-based approach to the creation of objects. Frequently his work considers the resources around us challenging the notion of ‘waste’ by changing its context entirely.

Below in-progress images of the Bridge Bench multi coloured

For Sales and Commission Enquiries Please Contact:
Louisa Pacifico: Future Icons: 07838102031 Louisa@futureicons.co.uk

John Radcliffe Bereavement Ward commission.

As the NHS celebrated its 75th birthday last month, I wanted to celebrate a small commission I have just completed at the John Radcliffe in Oxford with Lara Sparey.

I was honoured to win this Artist's Commission back in January this year for the Butterfly Suite in The Women’s Centre at the Hospital. The Butterfly Suite is for families who have suffered a bereavement as well as mothers whose babies are premature and in Special Care and may suffer a loss.

It is here, in the rooms and corridors surrounding this roof garden that Staff support parents in their loss and help them create memories of their baby. The brief was to create a programme of artwork for the Butterfly Suite to uplift the spaces, for staff and patients, to add colour and to unify the areas from the inside out, and vice versa.

After my site visit, I knew that I wanted to wrap the floor-to-ceiling windows with an oversized, colourful garden of flowers, and evoke a feeling of protection from the overhanging leaves from above as you walk down the corridors that surround the roof garden. I chose willow tree leaves, as a tree symbolic of humans' capability to withstand hardship, and loss. New trees can be rooted from cuttings with ease, and it's also seen as a survivor and a symbol of rebirth. I have always personally loved to stand under these trees in the heat of the summer and peer through the leaves, which is how I photographed them for this project.

I was thrilled to bring Lara Sparey Designs onto the project to collaborate with her as a fellow designer, a multi-talented one at that, and a bereaved parent herself. 🤍🙏🏽🕊

Lara's design practise focuses on metal artworks for public realm projects, which was perfect for the tiled wall for this commission.

The staff were clear they wanted butterflies, so we brought those through both as vinyl on the windows and on the wall mural that Lara designed. Echoing the garden of flowers, she focussed on the fern leaves, with the butterflies rising up from the foliage and the birds that carry your eye northwards. The colour combinations had to work across the wall and the windows and not be too overpowering, alongside a limited palette to fit with the budget.

We could only choose 3 colours plus white, but when combined across the tiled wall, one’s eye beautifully makes out a multitude of greens as the light changes across the surface area.

It is a humbling process for a designer working in this realm, designing spaces that need to support people healing, and going through difficult emotions alongside both physical and mental pain. The instal day was an emotional one, as loss touches us all at some point in our lives, but everyone, fabricators, staff, the Gardner, and Mark all got fully involved, which made it an unforgettable event.

To Judith and Mark Williams - Murphy thank you for your support for the Oxford Hospitals Charity which in turn helped commission us.

In Memory of Jacob James Murphy.

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/The-J-Team2022

@justgiving/

@oxfordhospitalscharity

Thank you for this very special opportunity 

🙏🏽🤍🕊

Ella and Lara on installation day.

In praise of the sunlight producing these shadows across the corridor hallway in the hospital.

Paint Drop

So here it is…Paint Drop… 

Over 18 months in the making since my call out on instagram WASTE PAINT WANTED

Needless to say I was inundated with every type of paint, from gloss to vinyls, emulsions to oils.

It was showcased at the Bargehouse in London’s Oxo Tower Wharf in September 2022 as part of Material Matters exhibition during the London Design Festival

The artwork measures 2.25 meter square - repurposing an old promotional canvas that I had lying around in my studio from a trade show over 5 years ago.

And I gave myself one rule – no brushes!

🖌⛔️

It’s been a joyous form of art therapy, a meditation in motion, during these crazy times… and I have loved the challenge. I have been through love and hate with it, thinking it was finished many times before it finally told me it was!

The layers and unpredictable cracks are my best bits, where gravity and the various paints are left to dry and do their magic…

The Bargehouse was a perfect setting for its debut! And there was serendipity in the painting being there at the Oxo tower…as I had collected a lot of waste paint from some designer friends of mine, British Colour Standard who had left it in a doorway under the Bargehouse for me to collect over a year and a half ago.

This piece is for sale, and if you would like to view it at my studio, or commission a new piece using an old or new canvas you may have lying around, please get in touch!

Photo by John Grant

Artist's Residency Urubamba, Peru.

My room with a view during my stay …

Rothko’s of Urubamba - Rosa y Marron

The ordinary and the incidental in perfect harmony.

My back-strap warp set up and ready to go…

These mountains are the lesser-known Rainbow Mountains, Palcoyo, over 4000 feet above sea level. Named as such due to the glaciers that have melted over time with climate change, revealing the sediment salts, minerals, and metals of the rocky landscape.

It was a jaw-dropping adventure in a small van of 12 of us… vistas to make your eyes water, waterfalls, traces of Inca agriculture high up in the mountain ridges, llamas and alpacas sprinkling the mountain sides like salt and pepper, the red earth, the adobe brick houses. A feast for the eyes and heart!

I felt a strange chill on my face for the first lap of the mount, and moments of complete dizziness due to the altitude. We were offered dried coca leaves on the ascent, and chewing them did seem to help!

And the locals in their colourful splendour positioned themselves along the ridges to be photographed, with their beautiful woven clothes in perfect harmony with the landscape.

Cusco

It struck me as I was landing in the city of Cusco, how the landscape seemed to reflect a woven textile; the housing blocks with oblong or square windows representing the weft against a predominant warp of brown terracotta tiles from the hill tops down to the central square. So many unfinished breeze block facades, interspersed with adobe brick housing or extensions, and the Colonial buildings of central Cusco still emanating the histories of a past time… The hybrid mash-up of Inka and Colonial architecture is fascinating to behold.

A close up of my first weave with Maria.

The local vernacular of Urubamba above

Azul Rothko’s of Urubamba

Above a section of my second weave ….

Below: Red dyes in general are notoriously hard to achieve, the best sources in the Andes are madder and the amazing cochineal bugs in the pictures below that thrive on the cactus plants. When our teacher added lime juice you can see the dark red lighten to an orange.

National Saturday Club Masterclass with Ella

A Peace Flag for Ukraine, designed by Students from the Fashion & Business and Art & Design Club members of the City of Oxford College.

This was a truly collaborative piece, with the clock ticking, as they had to design, carve and print the wood block designs, cut, sew, and piece the motives together in one session! One group focussed on the block printing, and the other on making and sewing the symbols of peace and unity onto the base flag. I provided the base fabrics and remnants from my collections, and the Students sketched ideas before we came together to curate and decide who should do what.

The National Saturday Club Summer Show is returning to Somerset House from 4–12 June. This year’s exhibition features the work of 1,500 13–16-year-old National Saturday Club members who have been attending weekly Saturday Clubs at 56 universities, colleges, and museums across the country.

I am proud to be part of the Masterclass programme, it will be an inspirational showcase of the ideas, creativity, and innovation of the nation’s next generation.

Go visit if you can find more details HERE

Interior Design Declares

Are you an Interior Designer?

Are you helping to challenge the industry you work in, and the companies that you do business with?

As a collective body of designers, contractors, installers, makers and more, we can all make a difference; by questioning processes and the way we are working with materials and systems (energy/diversity/health and the environment) into more regenerative and circular ways… join the movement and the conversation

For more information and to add YOUR NAME to the list and the conversations visit the website HERE

The twin crises of climate breakdown and biodiversity loss are the most serious issue of our time. Buildings and construction play a major part, accounting for nearly 40% of energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions whilst also having a significant impact on our natural habitats.

For everyone working in the design and construction industry, meeting the needs of our society without breaching the earth’s ecological boundaries will demand a paradigm shift in our behaviour. Together with our clients, we will need to commission and design spaces within buildings as indivisible components of a larger, constantly regenerating and self-sustaining system.

The research and technology exist for us to begin that transformation now, but what has been lacking is collective will. Recognising this, we are committing to strengthen our working practices to design spaces with a more positive impact on the world around us.

Interior Designers who have declared a Climate Emergency, will seek to:

• Raise awareness of the climate and biodiversity emergencies and the urgent need for action amongst our clients and supply chains.

• Advocate for faster change in our industry towards regenerative design practices and a higher Governmental funding priority to support this.

• Share knowledge and research to that end on an open source basis.

• Evaluate all new projects against the aspiration to contribute positively to mitigating climate breakdown, and encourage our clients to adopt this approach.

• Work towards including life cycle costing, whole life carbon modelling and post-occupancy evaluation as part of our basic scope of work, to reduce both embodied and operational resource use.

• Work with others in the construction industry to upgrade existing buildings for extended use as a more carbon-efficient alternative to demolition and new build whenever there is a viable choice.

• Act to address the disproportionate impact of these crises on disadvantaged communities and ensure that all mitigation and adaptation efforts address the needs of all people.

• Ensure diverse and inclusive principles are implemented in hiring and retaining staff so that people of all backgrounds can participate in decision-making about the future of the designed environment

• Request 3rd party certification or similar demonstration of environmental provenance and impact for each product specified.

• Adopt more regenerative design principles in our studios, with the aim of designing spaces which go beyond the standard of net-zero carbon, including the specification of ultra low energy appliances.

• Accelerate the shift to low embodied carbon materials in all our work. Seek to reuse and recycle products and materials at every available opportunity.

• Minimise wasteful use of resources in interior design, both in quantum and in detail. Collaborate with all members of the industry to further reduce construction and packaging waste.

URGE collective

Ella is one of the founder members of URGE which is a creative collective made up of designers, strategists, architects and makers.

We have come together to help drive change through transformation, education, innovation and communication. As a collective we are well versed in sustainability, and circular economy approaches. We partner with businesses large and small, helping to facilitate and accelerate change.

We have the ability to envision new ideas and mobilise people to bring their ideas to life.

We have asked each member of URGE to share their reasons for being part of the collective and their hopes for how it will help build a better future. Read an excerpt from Ella’s response to this question:

‘Since the pandemic, we have seen that community can be powerful, adaptive and caring. We have all felt the potency and value of our social economy and community, and the need for everyone’s good health and wellbeing. We want to harness this in URGE. 

My URGEncy is to help promote the wake-up call that we have been given at this moment and to collectively advance on the raised awareness around the well-being of all life.

I have made or been part of making ‘products’ for over 25 years, thousands of products, in volume and design through my own manufacture and that of my licensors. It was over 10 years ago when I started to engage with re-use and re-designing old furniture, this led me to a residency at the RSA’s Great Recovery Project with (fellow URGE member) Sophie Thomas. 

We started at a waste site looking at bulky waste and we ended up focussing our research and findings on the retrieval of a perfectly good sofa that was headed for landfill due to the missing fire label.  There is much work to do in order to promote more ‘closed loops’. And my part in URGE’s community of creatives could support, inspire and promote this transformation. Through workshops, through Life Cycle Assessments, from individuals to large-scale companies. We could build carbon literacy events for businesses and the public through the lens of design and art-based activities and workshops.

My own company is working with our manufacturers and collaborators to close as many loops as possible in the stream of materials and manufacturing processes we share together. We have shifted from a stock-holding company to only making to order the products that are required. 

Read Ella’s full article HERE.

Why not sign up for the URGE collective newsletter HERE

Do you know about the Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill?

I urge you to take a look at the CEE Bill and sign up and share. The CEE Bill, which was officially published in the Commons back in November 2020 offers the UK Government a viable framework for climate action. It has been drafted by a group of scientists, academics, lawyers and environmentalists, the Bill aims to ensure that the UK plays a good and proper role in limiting global heating to 1.5 degrees Celcius.

I encourage you to share it widely between family, friends and work colleagues. During a talk hosted by @businessdeclares last week, I learnt that the Climate Bill back in 2008, started out as a Private Members Bill like this one before it was brought into law. If we can get this into law, then we have a fighting chance of keeping within our planetary boundaries. As we stand at the moment with our current government's pledge of reductions by 2050, we do not!

There has been a minor setback, as the next reading of the Bill in the commons has been cancelled. The plan now is to create a Twitter storm that MPs won’t be able to ignore. On Friday, 26 March those in support are being asked to record a video and tweet to your MP asking them to back the CEE Bill (or thanking them if they already do). You can find out if your MP supports the Bill here. 

I also learnt last week that every Private Members Bill that has been supported by the campaign model used to drive the CEE Bill forward has been passed into law the Climate Change Act was the last example (back in 2008). And each of those previous Private Members Bills was vigorously opposed initially by the government of the day, and it was the citizens and voters action in every constituency holding their MPs to account and building broad and deep coalitions both locally and nationally that enabled the likes of this Bill to go through. Take a read and sign up. We cannot ignore the Climate Emergency we are all facing. 

Let’s get our MPs supporting it, keep dreaming big everyone and let’s make this happen!

https://www.ceebill.uk/bill

Read the interview by Darren Clanford of Material Source

Chatting to Ella Doran designer, photographer, and mark-maker.

Read the full interview at Material Source

Watch the conversation replay of 'What We Need Now'

Replay Ella Doran and jewellery designer Sian Evans as they discuss what we need as people and small businesses to survive and even thrive moving forward in this moment.

Moderated by Charlene C Lam, NYC-LDN content consultant and curator of The Creative Edit.

A conversation with East London designers Sian Evans and Ella Doran, with curator and creative business consultant Charlene C Lam of The Creative Edit. Part of the Shoreditch Design Triangle during London Design Festival 2020.

Redesign and Reuse: Ella Doran, Duncan Riches, Sophie Thomas, Urban Upholstery

Duncan Riches interviews Ella Doran, Andrea and Patrizia of Urban Upholstery, and Sophie Thomas about their new chair ‘Clean Up Plastic Camo’ launching during Shoreditch Design Triangle 2020. Discover the story behind the Chair and how they created a new fabric using the negative back-story of plastic pollution with a new message of re-use and hope.

This podcast was recorded live on Monday 14 September 2020.