Running for fourteen years, it all started with one college leaver’s simple ambition - getting a job. Pulp Friction has now grown into a multi-faceted organisation offering learning disabled and autistic people across Notts opportunities to get into work. Strings to their bow include running a community garden, community café, catering service, and their nominative mobile smoothie bike. Now they can add several Chelsea Flower Show awards. We met the team to hear all about their work…
Pulp Friction is quite a name isn’t it? Well it all began with a bike, you see. Not just any bike - a smoothie bike. I’ll explain what that is in just a sec.
Whilst the bike’s an engaging inroad, what really drives Pulp Friction is the powerful mission they’re pedalling. That is to employ and support learning disabled and autistic people through developing skills - it’s about building their confidence, members will tell me.
They do this through a range of enterprises including a community garden to grow their own veg, and a cafe to cook it in, but also through other activities like running a choir, and heading to litter pick Glastonbury. It's rooted in care and sustainability, giving members a lifeline whilst reducing food waste by working with food providers across the Midlands.
But what is a smoothie bike? Picture a blender, add a bicycle and pedals instead of an electrical motor and bang, you’re away. It’s not until the end of a rambunctious video call ramble through Pulp Friction’s work that I get to speak with its spirited co-founder Jill Carter, who is, I’m told, a ‘proper doer’. When I do manage to catch her, I ask how it all began…
“So my daughter Jessie was about to leave college and she wanted to work at a posh restaurant, like Pizza Express, but she tried and they didn't have the support she needed. We saw a guy with a smoothie bike at the Robin Hood Festival at Nottingham castle in 2009 and we just had a chat with him. I said to Jessie (Jill’s daughter, Director and Co-Founder) you know what, I think you could do that and learn those skills. About a year later, she applied for some funding with a group of friends at her college, and they got it, which enabled them to buy a bike, a phone and a laptop.”
All of us have different things that we bring, and if the right environment is nurtured then all of us can make a contribution. It can be a path or it can be a choir, every single voice makes a difference
They’ve grown since and are now based at Nottinghamshire Police and Fire and Rescue Service Joint Headquarters (JHQ) at Burntstump - also the name of the nearby Woodland Trust-managed nature reserve, the site is near the stunning Blidworth Bottoms (not what it sounds like), and the much-loved Papplewick Pumping Station. If that doesn’t place it for you, then like me you probably need to spend more time visiting north Notts; it’s about bang on north as you can get from LeftLion’s Sneinton Market base, halfway to Mansfield.
Today I catch the team in their community garden around the back of Bestwood Park Church, where they also run a café. “This is where we did a lot of the growing for Chelsea (Flower Show) actually, in the polytunnel here” explains Beth Danks, their lead gardener. “We've got spuds and onions in, a few poppies self-seeded. This fleabane went into the garden as well.”
Beth’s keeping an eye on proceedings as we chat. “Please don’t chop the potatoes down! Just the edges… so Dan, if you rake it you can see where the edges are a bit better,” and we’ll chat to Dan shortly after he’s finished that job.
Yes, they’ve just been to the world famous Chelsea Flower Show. And they’ve not just been for a jolly - getting to meet the likes of Gardeners’ World legend Monty Don and Bake Off’s glistening Paul Hollywood. They’ve cleaned up too, with their “Growing Skills Garden” winning both a coveted Silver-Gilt award and the People’s Choice Award for Small Garden.
The first member I speak to is Claire, who’s been at Pulp Friction for fourteen years. “I originally went in 2010, with my dad at Hemlock Happening but I knew Jill and Jessie from youth club.” She ‘mostly does the garden side’, she says, and also works on catering.
Alex is another member who works with Pulp Friction. “On Mondays I go to JHQ and prepare food for the next day, and then on Tuesday I help cook the food” - for him it’s about creating an ‘independent environment’.
Claire tells me that the main benefit she’s felt is "probably building my confidence up, because I didn't have any when I first started." She speaks proudly of the garden she’s growing at home, skills she learned at Pulp Friction, “I’ve got runner beans, I’ve got kale, potatoes, courgettes.” Claire's contribution to the Chelsea garden was to plant the Gabion baskets - the metal wire cages filled with offcut stone and insect-friendly invitations, which give the garden structure.
Jill shares an analogy she liked about the baskets. “One of our parents Jackie pointed out that this stone is going to be thrown away because it's off cuts and it's no use to anybody, but if you think about it and put it together differently, then there's a beautiful path made here… all of us have got different things that we bring, and if the right environment is nurtured then all of us can make a contribution. It can be a path or it can be a choir, every single voice makes a difference.”
Dan, another member, tells me more about some of the challenges he has faced in work. “It was very difficult for me to get a paid job, because people in restaurants don't realise that other people have disabilities, and they can take advantage. Now I work for Greene King and have been there for two years.” For him, the key to success is having management that creates a welcoming place, firmly anti-bullying, where everyone can feel safe and supported.
“If you make that bit of reasonable adjustment, then everybody can achieve,” Beth says when considering how businesses can adapt to people with disabilities. “You just need to actually think about it and make that change. Sometimes it's about thinking about work in a slightly different way, like chunking up jobs.” From the members themselves, Dan says “everyone should be treated equally, and it’s about doing things as a community as well,” and Claire adds that for her it’s “everybody helping each other out.”
Part of that is also about members being alongside wider community groups - over 200 volunteers came down over a couple of weeks at the start of June to relocate the Chelsea garden, which lives on at the fire station at Stockhill celebrating Pulp Friction’s long standing partnership with Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service.
Jill and Jessie’s dream has come a long way, and Chelsea has hugely raised their profile according to Jill. “What I wanted was for the spotlight to be on our members, and for people to see the skills and the contribution that they have made to getting into the biggest flower show in the world. People who we work with are people who aren't valued hugely by society, but they’ve got so much to give. They show it everyday, but they showed it especially at Chelsea.”
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