Bread & Roses uses floristry as a tool to enable women from refugee backgrounds to develop skills, knowledge and networks

“We wanted to try and offer women something uplifting and joyful, as well as practical, to support them along their journey.”
– ***Bread & Roses***
Bread & Roses is a social enterprise florist. The enterprise was set up in 2016 to respond to the needs of women the founders had met and worked with in the refugee community.

1. Who is Bread & Roses and what have you set out to achieve?

Bread & Roses is a social enterprise florist. We set the enterprise up in 2016 to respond to the needs of women we had met and worked with in the refugee community: our aim is to provide practical and emotional support to women as they navigate the complex process of rebuilding their lives in a new country. We do this by running floristry training programmes where women can learn a new skill and in the process improve their English, form new friendships and receive signposting to local support services.

2. What was the driving force behind your decision to establish this award-winning social enterprise?

Like many others in 2016, which was the height of Europe’s “refugee crisis”, we felt we couldn’t just passively watch what was happening unfold before us. We wanted to contribute something, even if it was something small, to the people who had lost everything and been treated so badly by the countries they sought refuge in. I think the fact that the humanitarian response in Calais and Dunkirk (the two main refugee camps in France) was entirely run by start-up charities, as there were no major NGOs over there, made us feel it was possible to start something ourselves. Lots of other initiatives in London sprung up around the same time and together we formed an ecosystem of support which has plugged some of the many gaps in provision for people seeking refuge.

The inspiration for using floristry as a tool to enable women from refugee backgrounds to develop skills, knowledge and networks to help them with the hard work of rebuilding their lives here came from a speech given by Rose Schneiderman over a hundred years ago: “What the woman who labours wants is the right to live, not simply exist - the right to life as the rich woman has the right to life, and the sun and music and art. You have nothing the humblest worker has not a right to have also. The worker must have bread but she must have roses too.” We took these words literally and decided we wanted to try and offer women something uplifting and joyful, as well as practical, to support them along their journey.

3. What are some of the barriers refugee women face trying to rebuild their lives?

Every person who is forced to leave their home and seek safety elsewhere faces the challenge of rebuilding their life in a new place. The pathway to doing is different for each person - but for nearly everyone, it involves navigating an unfamiliar system in order to learn a new language, settle within a new community and generate a livelihood. Women from refugee backgrounds face particular barriers to rebuilding their lives in the UK; they are less likely to have formal work experience than their male counterparts and often, if they are parents, find it difficult to attend English classes due to being the primary care-giver. On top of this, many women rebuilding their lives are coping with the trauma of having experienced sexual or gender-based violence.

4. What made floristry the perfect tool for empowering and connecting refugee women and how does floristry help your community of women overcome the challenges they’ve faced in their lives?

People seeking asylum cannot work or study while they’re waiting for a decision on their application. The Home Office aims to process applications in six months but in reality it often takes much longer, dragging on for years. During this period, asylum seekers receive around £37 a week for all their living expenses: travel, phone bill, food, clothing, everything. Once they’ve covered the essentials, there isn’t much left for the things that make life worth living. The gaps in education and employment created by the asylum system in the UK compound the challenge of securing a job as a non-native English speaker, making it even more difficult for people to find work even once they have been granted refugee status. Given this context, it’s not difficult to understand the high rate of unemployment amongst refugees in the UK, which is three times higher than the national average at 18%.

Before setting up Bread & Roses, we volunteered at Women for Refugee Women, where we witnessed the determination of women to stay busy and keep learning, despite the many barriers preventing them from having the sort of agency and structure in their lives that most of us take for granted - and that keeps us sane. Our experience as volunteers impressed upon us the need for more initiatives to help women find purpose and meaning in their lives.

Floristry has been such a wonderful tool for bringing women together and supporting them as they rebuild. Fundamentally, this is because it offers something creative, joyful and out-of-the-ordinary, which is hard to come by when so many women lack the financial means for anything other than the bare essentials of living. Once women join our programme - which they are often attracted to for the floristry - they have the opportunity to practice and improve their English and are provided with information about a range of local support services.

Beyond the benefits for the women themselves, we've always said flowers are our secret weapon in terms of helping us to raise awareness about the challenges facing refugees in the UK. Floristry has enabled us to grab the attention of individuals / organisations that otherwise might not have been interested in the issues Bread & Roses tackles, meaning that we're not always preaching to the choir...!

5. What made London, Paris and Tel Aviv your chosen cities to launch the initiative?

London because it's our home! Paris and Tel Aviv because we had connections to volunteers and organisations supporting refugee communities there. Refugees in France and Israel face different challenges to those in the UK due to the particularities of each asylum system. But everyone rebuilding their life in a new country needs support to help them do so, which has meant our model has been successfully adapted to work in both cities.

6. How has the Covid-19 pandemic impacted what you do?

The direct impact on Bread & Roses has been that we've had to reduce the number of programmes and participants we can work with each year - as have many other organisations that provide vital support to people from refugee backgrounds. But the indirect impact is worse, as we know the economic consequences of the pandemic affects those on low incomes or who are recipients of welfare support most acutely. It is already tough being an asylum seeker or refugee in the UK; a recession isn't going to make it any easier.

7. What is next on the horizon for Bread & Roses in supporting the sustainable floristry movement?

Supporting the sustainable floristry movement is a key tenet of Bread and Roses philosophy. Our floristry director Liv grows in Hertfordshire and we mainly use flowers from her fields for our programmes as well as supporting the community of other UK market flower farms. Using British flowers is hugely important to us as we are trying to keep our supply chains as environmentally friendly and ethical as possible. Working directly with British flower suppliers allows us to ensure that we reduce our carbon footprint, the damaging effects of pesticide run off and have transparency that we have a slavery-free supply chain. Ensuring fair wages and working conditions are fundamental to our ethos, the exploitation of a mainly female and people of colour workforce in countries where pesticide use and working conditions are less regulated is of huge concern to us. The next steps here for us are to continue to raise awareness about the importance of provenance in floristry and to grow a network of florists who share our principles in order to expand our offering beyond London. We have exciting plans to partner with another flower farm already in the pipeline...

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