Stuff like wooden planters as well. I have no skills, but have bashed out a load just using decking boards, decking screws and cheap strips of wood. Give them a paint. Very cheap to make and they sell for quite a bit when I’ve looked to buy online or in garden centres. Quite therapeutic to do as well, when u don’t fuck all the measurements up
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I can’t help with English schemes but Scotland definitely have January-start courses and we’d fund you if you’re jobseeking (and most courses are free here anyway.)
Check with colleges near you (I think Manchester are merged now) - they probably have a student advice team if you’re not sure what’s available.
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I think community gardens and/or community growing projects could be a good place to start. There are loads in Manchester. I don’t know any specifically, I lived there nearly 20 years ago (fuck) but there was definitely a lot then and from a quick google looks like more now. There’s usually volunteering opportunities at places like that, and although it probably wouldn’t be challenging work that would rapidly upskill you (though I might be wrong), you’ll probably meet people who are involved in all kinds of different environmental projects and that might start to help you work out what kind of things are going on in your area and make contacts. You could also learn about permaculture, sustainable growing, biodiversity, local food economies, etc.
Or more broadly, look into what environmental projects are happening locally and see what peaks your interest the most. Without wanting to teach you how to use google, I couldn’t help myself and found this list of projects in G Manc, including a few in Stockport. While some of the bigger projects are likely to be led by the local authority or large corporate bodies, you’ll find that around the fringes of such projects there will be smaller NGOs or community groups delivering aspects of them, and these are generally a bit easier to find a way in through.
https://naturegreatermanchester.co.uk/the-top-10-projects-greening-greater-manchester/
Or you could contact orgs like Natural England, National Trust, Historic England and ask them. They might have volunteer co-ordinators in your area if they have a local office, or point you to organisations who organise volunteers.
This is less outdoorsy but I know there a few community energy projects in Manchester. Community groups who get solar PV installed on community buildings or organise retrofitting in the community. I saw something on facebook the other day about a project getting people from the theatre/set building industry in Manchester back into work insulating people’s houses during the pandemic. These kinds of organisations, if they don’t have hands-on work, often need help with organising, campaigns, social media and website stuff. Or a lot of people have been having open online zoom meetings throughout the pandemic, which you could find out about and just go to listen in and see if there’s anything of interest happening.
I tend to move in small scale and community oriented circles so this is how I generally think about these things, so sorry if this is all a bit niche. There’s undoubtedly other approaches that I wouldn’t know about.
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amazing, thank you dude. I will have a digest of this after footy.
same to @keith and @anon26275971, thank you x
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If you want to do any volunteering for City of Trees I’ll hook you up (its part of the charity set up by the company I work for). Got to use some sort of machetes last time I volunteered for them, great fun.
Carpentry wise I’d recommend contacting Andrew Jeffay, an absolute brilliant family run tiny business (he’s also fascinating and did loads of work around right to roam movement) They’re in Ancoats (can do an intro if you like? He built me some soap boxes when I ran a protest event in Stevenson square)
Check out dwelle @Acorn their sustainable wooden cabin near platt fields is used as a classroom for others who want to build zero carbon micro homes, might be a good contact.
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Would just like to thank everyone who has replied and got in touch again following my post yesterday. Extremely kind of everyone
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I have seen multiple places advertising for KS3/4 science tutors (which I think is what you do already) on Indeed - I know they’re all agencies but they might be able to offer you something.
Do you want some links?
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If I haven’t sent you a DM by tonight, publicly shame me here.
Check out the GM skills for employment scheme, that may have some support that can help.
sorry if it’s not helpful but you can take cabinetmaking night classes at universities, might be a nice bite sized (8 week) taste of it and you can decide if you like it
i’m gonna be recruiting for a social media role in jan, i think i have 30k to put to it, 7% employer pension, 10-6. small business but covid safe.
will post proper details in the new year the second it’s live. only downside is you’d be working for me
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can this be done from home aka a different city?
it cannot, sadly
good point though - i should mention you’d be working in mayfair
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If you don’t mind me asking, what sort of specific tasks would be involved in this, and are there any targets? Probably just me being a grandad, but it seems a lot of money for tweeting. I assume it involves a lot of industry-specific stuff, other types of networking and customer service?
yes, it’s a bit of a funny one when you’re doing retail social media - at the base level you’re building the accounts up across twitter, youtube (particularly important now), IG, facebook, and that includes interaction with groups within those platforms. But the truth is that you’re separately a point of contact, because a vast number of people tend to ask direct questions through social media about items that are on display, and because a lot of our stuff is worth a fair whack, answering/communicating well makes a real difference to weekly sales.
So in terms of targets, it’s part ‘number of followers’ but that’s not really as important as whether or not we’re getting peoples’ attention or tbh the best thing of all - getting them to visit the shop itself (in a non covid world)
all your antiques businesses of our sort are completely at odds with modern world ideas in that sense - my goal through social, newsletters, google, paid ads, PR and printed catalogues is of course to get people to buy books, but the biggest stuff happens if i can get a serious collector (or prospective one) in through the door to meet one of our specialists. That’s when stuff goes into the realms of tens/hundreds of thousands.
30k in London isn’t bad by any stretch of the imagination, but i’m expecting people to commute to Mayfair, which gets pricier, and i tend to find that a smaller team on better pay tends to get better work done than a larger team but on lower pay.
but yeah i’m by no means a rule on this stuff, more the exception, coz we work in a fully disjointed industry. until now another person on my team had been handling the social side but she’s overwhelmed sorting the blog and newsletter side of it all coz that’s become a much bigger job. when i first started seven years ago i was the only person doing all of it along with managing the site, so it’s changed a bit but we’re still a relatively small team
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If it all gets too much for them, my CV is ready
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looking for someone to build a squarespace website and shop, guessing it’ll be a day or two’s work? DM if interested and we can chat further!
(offer remains open to the two disers I already asked who didn’t sound too keen 
)
i’d be interested in this
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