Crafting a New Chapter: Local Arts and Crafts Shop Joins Shrewsbury Library

Transcript

00:00My name is Jess Richards and I'm the founder of Shrewsbury Arts and Crafts and Shrewsbury Arts Trail.

00:05Yeah, so a few months back I was in quite a sad position and thought I'd have to shut my shop

00:10and I didn't want it to go to nothing so I contacted Catherine Berry from the library here.

00:16We've worked together for years for Shrewsbury Arts Trail and I approached her about some space

00:22for a concession and we got it passed by Shropshire Council so we've got a shop here

00:26and the shop over in Purchase House is still running, just gone under renovation so both are now open.

00:34I mean the staff here is so lovely, it's such an amazing space, I feel really honoured to be here

00:39and you know we did a soft launch, we didn't want to kind of like tell everybody straight away

00:44take it slowly, get the shop ready, the staff used to it but yeah the first day, Saturday

00:50there was quite a few sales coming in before we'd even pushed anything so yeah it's going really well.

00:56They're all locally made and handmade goods, we've got ceramics and this is by Rose Norm

01:01and we've just sold it's sister actually in the shop at Purchase House and we've got jewellery,

01:06paintings, prints, cards so yeah the same kind of range that we've got in Purchase House

01:13but with the shop here at the library I wanted to bring in more artists from the Arts Trail

01:18and different artists from around Shropshire so.