I want to celebrate the generosity of my Kidderminster colleagues.

A childhood friend of my daughter, who has been in the care system all of her life, is due to set up home on her own. She has nothing to start a home with. I sent an appeal e-mail to my work colleagues asking for any donations. They really stepped up. Either offering items they no longer needed or even offering to purchase new items for Elle. They shared the list of items with their friends and family and the donations poured in.

I’m overwhelmed with gratitude for the kindness and generosity shown towards someone they have never met.

I wanted to say a big thank on Elle’s behalf but I also wanted to tell everyone about these acts of kindness. These seemingly small donations from each person mean so much to Elle, she is so thankful and can’t believe her luck.

Thank You everyone from the bottom of my heart
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Alluded to, but perhaps a little under the radar from my last post – we are just starting to see the first marketing comms from Cass Art on the new W&N AOC colour Smalt, which is exclusive to them in the UK until the end of May. Cass Art is a big strategic partner for us, and this is a major step forwards in terms of moving towards a more brand-building mentality and away from a traditional trading mindset. Initial results are very encouraging – a 50% open rate on their first targeted email, and 60 tubes sold in under a week (which was our target for the whole month once pipefill is excluded). Cass is going to drip-feeding the content we have created with them out to consumers over the next few weeks, to keep up the momentum on this fantastic premium launch. The product exclusive on Smalt will be interspersed with a wider category call out on the AOC range, including supporting mediums and tools/surfaces. This is a really exciting and unique brand building opportunity for us, and one that will hopefully pave the way for more in the future. There has been a really great effort by all involved to help make this happen and I’m sure other members of the team will be sharing further updates as this unfolds!

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Sustainability Wednesday:

One of the big challenges in plastic recycling is the separation of different kinds of plastic. Similar looking packaging can have very different composition and uses so it\’s important that they are separated.

\”The Digital Watermarks Initiative HolyGrail 2.0 is a pilot project with the objective to prove the technical viability of digital watermarks for accurate sorting of packaging waste as well as the economic viability of the business case at large scale.

Digital watermarks are imperceptible codes, the size of a postage stamp, covering the surface of a consumer goods packaging and carrying a wide range of attributes. The aim is that once the packaging has entered into a waste sorting facility, the digital watermark can be detected and decoded by a high resolution camera on the sorting line, which then – based on the transferred attributes (e.g. food vs. non-food) – is able to sort the packaging in corresponding streams. This would result in better and more accurate sorting streams, thus consequently in higher-quality recyclates benefiting the complete packaging value chain.\”

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/business-59552404
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Having established a hybrid way of working for both tfac and our retailers, it was good to be able to show Winsor and Newton new oil colours this morning, to Cass staff from all over the UK . We run monthly morning training for Cass staff, focussing on our USP and NPD specifically, recognising that the majority of staff are art graduates or students from major art schools and when they are not, like Mr Cass himself, they have strong interest in contemporary art. In this session, I was able to draw attention to the relevance these new colours bring and how specifically their nomenclature is based on history, pigment and colour theory and what this means to the artist through practical demonstration, highlighting the importance of single pigments in colour mixing and showing the desaturation of colours by mixing greys, using exclusively only the new colours. The presentation is on the bank if you would like an insight into the tinting and toning possibilities. Cass were really enthusiastic about these additions to the palette; these historic colours, now lightfast and the fact that we are unique in having George Field and the archive tint books to show what the colours should actually look like such as; Smalt, Ruby madder Alizarin and and warm brown pink. It was exciting to be involved in this but even more so, to be able to show them.

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