00:00My name's Dave Firth and I am the director of Slate Leeds, which is the feel-good furniture shop and the feel-good cafe.
00:08Slate was set up in 2004 by our patron Francis Jones to direct usable furniture and electricals from landfill as well as giving working opportunities to adults with learning disabilities.
00:22We have a shop on Low Road in Hunsler and also this shop on Canal Street in Armley.
00:27Essentially, we collect items of furniture that people do not require anymore.
00:32We do free collections in our vans and we sell them in our shops.
00:36Furniture, electricals, beds, bric-a-brac.
00:39We direct thousands of tonnes of items PA from being sent to landfill.
00:44I work with the best people in the world to me, my team and my family.
00:50Everyone's the same, no matter if you're a volunteer or you're a paid worker.
00:53Everyone's the same. We're here to do a job and we're here to learn.
00:56We've got many people, you'll meet Nicholas later on, started off as a volunteer and now he's in paid employment with us.
01:05We also strive to direct our volunteers into employment with other organisations also.
01:11I work for the field of furniture shop in Armley. I do a bit of everything.
01:21I've done that one. I enjoy all of it. Meeting people, meeting customers and try mingling with people and so on.
01:30I've started off working in the cafe at Lake Lake and after I've done cafe and I went down to Unslit's shop to work down and then I had to work up here and then I'm back at Unslit now.
01:44The team will. They can't do that with me.
01:47The best thing we find about working in the shops is giving people the opportunity to afford
02:17quality items. You know, it's 2025. We should be ending furniture poverty in the UK, but still some families don't have the basics like a bed, a sofa or a washing machine.
02:27The biggest thing is, is how kind people are. We get some very, very good quality items in and the people who've done it could sell them themselves for quite a substantial amount.
02:39You know, we get some sofas that they spent £4,000 on and that gives us the opportunity to really make a bit more money.
02:47In terms of odd things, our charity partner Revive had a coffin.
02:51Some things I won't talk about on air, but yes, we do get a plethora of items coming through.
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