The first themed week began and we opened our doors to the public with Recycling Week. The week featured upcycling and recycling workshops with visits from Port Restyle, which specialises in upcycling and restyling, and Green Futures, which aims to get people to live a greener lifestyle. Lead by team member Phil Simpson, we worked alongside various green/environmental organisations as well as local vintage clothing groups to provide clothing racks with hundreds of vintage clothing pieces. The idea being that the public could come in and swap their own unwanted clothes for something on the rack for free and as it grows, the quality of the clothing would improve. Organiser of the Recycling Week, Phil Simpson, said: “We encourage people to recycle on our Facebook page so the recycling week is something that is close to our hearts and we hope to encourage more people to recycle and live a sustainable lifestyle.”

Recycling week was the best attended week in terms of attendance. Although our target audience is 18 – 25 year olds and the main demographic age from the week were elderly females, we were still very pleased with the community involvement and many members of the public said the clothes swapping idea is something Grimsby should see more of on a permanent basis as there is definitely a large audience for it.

Our second week was Lifestyle week, led by Enfuse team members Joe Mager, Shelby Fountain and Bayard Tarpley. We wanted to host our projects with a lifestyle theme, being a relaxed social environment embracing the positive aspects of younger people’s lifestyles. Activities included hourly music jams – in which anybody could take part and we provided a lot of music equipment, a Mario Kart tournament projected onto the wall, rapping workshop, playlist chooser, a balloon pit and even a prop photo booth disguised as a camper van.

Team member Joe Mager said to the Grimsby Telegraph “We can’t wait to start lifestyle week, it will be our chance to engage with people our own age and listen to their views on various issues. The main goal of Enfuse is to help young people, we want to take their views on board and actually do something about them, assisting them in setting up projects to fulfil their aspirations and giving them skills and experience in whatever it may be that they are passionate about. Lifestyle Week is about showing young people that there is a large variety of ways to engage with their community. By creating a fun environment where people can come in and not feel intimidated or pushed into anything, we think that they will naturally connect with one of the activities we’re offering and ask how they can get more involved with volunteering projects on offer in the area.”

Lifestyle week was the best attended week in terms of our target audience. The team spoke to a lot of younger people about various issues and signposted them to the things they were passionate about. We signed up over 20 volunteers in the week who wanted to come back to us and get involved with future events, and the general feedback from the public was similar to Recycling week, being that Grimsby needs a permanent venue for the activities we were promoting.

Team members Sophie Wilson and Thomas Plaskitt led employment week, in which the whole shop was transformed again into a more professional and formal looking area for the public to come in and get advice/help on careers. We hosted job searches, CV writing workshops and actual employers coming into the unit to talk to potential candidates then and there on the spot. We felt like his approach was different, exciting and it proved to be a success as one young person who came in spoke to an employer and was offered an actual job. Employers who attended in the week ranged from the Armed Forces, Alcrest, Job Centre Plus, Hull Business Training, McArthur Dean, HomeStart, Volunteer Centre North East Lincolnshire and CERT among others.

Week lead Thomas Plaskitt said to the Grimsby Telegraph “I think that giving people one-to-one conversations about jobs is the best approach. Hopefully from the knowledge I’ve learnt in this job role I can help others get into work. It’s going to be great and we’re even going to have laptops for people to apply for current job roles whilst receiving support from us in the shop.”

Employment week was very well received by the public. As it was primarily younger people offering help to other younger people, there were a lot of great results. The quality of peoples CVs went up and the number of enthusiastic and hopeful job applications rose among the general vibe that job searching and applying is not as terrifying and hopeless as a lot of younger people were telling us at the start. Enfuse operate very well in social situations and reading the atmosphere of young people, and we knew that we helped a lot of young people on their employment ladder during that week.

Our final week in the Freshney Place unit was led by team members Sophie Johnson, Anneliese Hannar and Lauren Bacon. For the final time the shop was transformed from the professional look of employment week into a family-friendly area targeted primarily at young families. Coinciding with National Play Day, the team wanted to bring some of the national activities to Grimsby and so we brought in costumed characters, arts and crafts, messy play areas, story time and family games.

Leader Anneliese Hannar said to the Grimsby Telegraph “We want to encourage children to play with no costs and fun, with appearances from popular children’s characters. I would like more children to play on a regular basis as it is a great way to develop skills and build on their knowledge. Some parents do not have much time to play with their children, so we are trying to promote different ways that parents can spend a small part of their day playing with their children, even if it is an hour a day”

Family Week, although praised by families for its free fun element had the shortest amount of footfall compared to the other three weeks. In my opinion I think this was because of its location inside a shopping centre and the fact that parents had to be present with their children inside the unit. Despite this, we learned valuable lessons from Family Week and how to work with younger children.