'Love Coventry works together with the people of Coventry to help meet the needs of the most vulnerable in our city. Donations of furniture, appliances, electrical goods, in fact anything you would normally find in a home are redistributed to families/ individuals in Coventry and surrounding areas at a very low cost or free in extreme cases. '
On their main website 'www.lovecoventry.com', they ask people to donate anything they want to get rid of in their houses and garages. They tell the public to liberate their stuff and let them use it to benefit groups working with children and young people, older people, and people with learning or physical disabilities in Coventry and surrounding areas. Love Coventry started as Lovcov.com a website ran by the young people from the Mosaic Church, their idea was to do a good deed today and encourage others to do something nice for someone else. The idea has grown largely from there.
I rang the number Giles gave me which put me in touch with a man called Bill Watt, he founded Love Coventry with a few people from his church, The Mosaic Church Coventry. Their church also created the hope centre which is a community centre in Hillfields, which is one of the roughest areas in Coventry. Their community centre provides free child care as well as other services which are important to helping the vulnerable such as soup kitchens and also the food bank once a week.
I spoke to Bill Watt about my project, why I wanted to photograph his 'Love Coventry' project and also let him know where I got his number from. Bill wanted to know what brought me too this point due to starting my project looking at how the homeless live in Manchester which I explained in full to him. He then gave me a date to come to their warehouse/showroom where they keep all the donated items which are either given to families who need it the most or sold to anyone who wants them. The profit from these sales are then used to help benefit families who are the most vulnerable.
On the phone Bill talked me through what they at Love Coventry offer, including the providing of furniture and household items as well as giving people work experience and also a place to practice their trade before taking it into the world un-supported.
