John Lewis and Waitrose have begun selling a tote bag designed by a care experienced university student based in Glasgow.
Michael Archibald, an 18-year-old student at the University of Strathclyde, applied to collaborate with the John Lewis Partnership and creative agency Saatchi & Saatchi on the project.
He then worked with the ad agency and an in-house design team, including a one-on-one session in Glasgow, to create the tote bag.
Made from recycled bottles, the new shopper bag is available online and in Waitrose and John Lewis stores. Profits from each £12 bag sold will go to Action for Children, Home-Start UK and Who Cares? Scotland.
Mr Archibald said: "The stars on the bag represent the brilliance of care experienced people, and the surrounding clouds depict the love, care and respect these individuals need.
“Creative industries are such a competitive field and being given the chance to create a product that is actually my own design - and see it physically in store - is an amazing experience. It’s made me feel like I’m able to go places.”
The collaboration came about via the Building Happier Futures programme which aims to identify and recruit talented people who’ve experienced care to become Partners at the John Lewis Partnership.
The programme includes work experience, guidance on CV writing and interview skills, as well as a guaranteed interview, this approach gives young people who are care experienced an opportunity to truly explore our business and start a meaningful career.
The programme has already raised over £1.1m in donations and engaged over 180 young people with experience of the care system who took part in employability programmes, with 21 offered jobs in the Partnership.
Sharon White, John Lewis Partnership chairman said: "The launch of this truly unique and special design is a symbol of the brilliantly talented Care Experienced people out there that deserve a platform and an opportunity to show their skills.
“This design reflects a poignant and unique story, and it will also give customers the opportunity to purchase beautiful products that have meaning behind them.”
Queralt Ferrer, John Lewis Director of Design for Fashion, said: “We set out to design a tote bag, but beyond that, our brief to Michael was very open.
"We could see he has a keen eye for aesthetics, and the ability to create authentic and captivating designs.
"His eye-catching final design effectively conveys a wonderful message - the stars symbolise the individuals growing up in care, surrounded by the support that the program provides.”
In the last year, the John Lewis Partnership became the first large retailer to receive a Fostering Friendly accreditation from the Fostering Network, contributed to a new Inclusive Employers Toolkit launched at the Care Leavers Covenant, and recently extended foster leave policies to include support for kinship carer Partners.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here