"Crafting gives me the chance to not be consumed by my thoughts or emotions." NoLabels speaks out.
- Harmony Holland
- May 17, 2021
- 3 min read
NoLabels is a company founded by therapist Nikki Reed and she focuses on how crafting help peopls mental health.
As Nikki is a qualified therapist she knows how to help people and therefore she believes that crafting helps people when they are struggling.
Nikki said: “I set up an orgnaisation called NoLabels and the values around that come from my career as an occupational therapist andwe use three words to hinge everything on, which is create, chat and connect. So, everything we do and what my company is based on is these three words and what they mean. My idea is that we use the theraputic benefit of craft for mental health. I own a gift shop, and the stock is only made from people who have mental health connections and everything is handmade or designed, they are all independant makers. The overall idea is to reach out to people using the power of craft and to be able to make our own little community as well.”
Crafting is something many people do for different reasons, for Nikki it is mostly to give herself space and make sure she is in tune with herself.
Nikki explains more about how crafting helps her mental health: “Crafting helps me by giving me a space to be able to detatch from anything that may be happening in the world. I suffer from anxiety and depression, as I have done my entire adult life. So, I choose to use different activities based on how I am feeling to be able to be in tune with my feelings and what I want to do.
“Crafting gives me the chance to not be consumed by my thoughts or emotions. Crafting has given me the chance to be creative, which is something I didn’t think I would ever be. Its given me the opportunity to do meditation like things, so for example putting my mind at ease, without sitting still because I have an activity in front of me.
“My dad passed away very suddenly, and understandably I went through a bit of a dpression from this even because it was very sudden. But I crafted, and it started to restore me, because that is what crafting does. It restores me.”
However, Nikki has also had her own struggles as well as trying to help other people. With covid hitting she had to shut her shop as well as having to be isolated from everyone due to a medical condition.
She said: “One day a shop in my home town became avaliable to rent, and I took it because I wanted something in the commuity people could come to and I could talk about mental health and the benefits of craft. While I was exploring the lease I found out it had to be a shop, it had to maintail its retail status and still be a giftshop so I merged them all together and I now have a gift shop. I kept my full time job and opened it on the weekends.”
“I have an autoimmune disorder and sadly I lost my job due to my health at the beginning of March 2020, just before lockdown. Therefore I did not get furlough and I was shielding, so with me having no income I had issues with my mental health again. And I haven’t been able to throw myself into work 24/7 like some people can do, I just can’t. With the closing of the retail shop due to covid, I decided not to rush things and open an online store just because of how unique our stock is and opening an online shop just wasn’t going to work. Also, I wanted to focus on myself a bit more during this time and I started painting and doing new things.
“As my mental health improved, I built a social media audience and made myself avalible for people to come to for advice. It takes a long time for people to learn to trust and for my social media to build up and make a community also took time.”
Many craft stores did decide to open up an online shop so that people didn’t miss out on the opportunity to buy things and so that people could be brought joy by the things they were buying. However, NoLabels helped in such a different and a unique way by being there for people and making a difference over zoom by doing online crafting sessions. Although Nikki struggles with her own mental health she also makes it her mission to help other people.
You can find NoLabels website here; https://nolabelsmentalwellbeing.org/
Comentarios