Emily Hanna

Photo credit: Brendan Harkin @brendanjharkin

“We’re trying to bring colour, light and love to an often quite solemn third sector.”

Another World Belfast are a not-for-profit community interest company (CIC) that exists to show love to any and all that need it. Having amassed over 30k followers across their social platforms, Another World Belfast is an endeavour born out of and sustained by their call for societal change.

Their mission is “to create practical projects that help both people and planet.”

The bright, bubbly, badass duo, Connor Kerr and Becky Bellamy, are here to “do no harm and take no sh*t.” With this Brene Brown quote at the forefront of their work, they are unapologetic in their approach. They’re here to disrupt the ‘done thing.’ After realising that there wasn't a central place in Northern Ireland that offered practical help to people struggling - whoever that may be- with no strings attached, they put plans in place to create that space.

The Scoop chatted to Connor and Becky to get a better understanding of Another World Belfast.

Can you introduce yourselves?

Connor: We're Another World Belfast, a not for profit CIC and we are based in Belfast- clearly!

Since 2017 we have provided direct aid including toiletries, underwear and clothing through our Love Pack programme, where we make up packages for people experiencing hardship containing essential hygiene items and some pamper treats as well. Our newest project is Free Store, which is essentially a clothing bank but super fancy. I guess it’s like a clothing bank on steroids. It is decorated beautifully, set up like a clothing store, and although we provide the practical items like coats, or pants and socks, it's also more about the experience and the wonderful and utterly luxurious and frivolous things that you can pick up as well if you fancy.

We prefer to focus on joy and love, rather than sometimes the sad stories that we are fed by advertisements from the big charities. People switch off. We want people to be swept up in the joy and camaraderie of delivering something incredible as a community. Via volunteering skills, or sticking a tenner into a fundraiser.

We could see a need for this type of specific secular community based project, particularly to cater for women and the LGBT community, who experience greater marginalisation and have been the overwhelming majority of those who have built this organisation.

We also have a shop in the city centre, which is how we pay for and power the whole lot. We call it SwapShop. It’s a place where you can buy any of our curated clothing collection inside for a tenner, or if you choose to bring great garments of your own to swap with us, you can get things for a fiver. We’re trying to bring colour, and light, and love into the third sector.

Can you go into some detail about what it means to be a CIC?

Becky: A CIC is a Community Interest Company. A ‘not for profit’- a true social enterprise really. So whenever you see people calling themselves social enterprises, but they're still set up as a limited for profit company, they're probably in it for the profit, and we would question whether that truly is for the community's benefit or not. [Being] a Community Interest Company means that we don't own Another World Belfast, it's all about the community and our purpose being purely of charitable interest, it gives us a lot of accountability. We really just want to always pay our bills and just pay ourselves and hire plenty of staff to run more projects! We’re now awaiting charity registration so we can reap the benefits of both systems to help as many people as possible in a complex economic environment.

Why did you set up Another World Belfast?

Becky: So Connor, after having been travelling the world and volunteering, working in different humanitarian projects, became unwell and needed to come home to Belfast to get some medical treatment. That was in the summer of 2017. While he was here, he wanted to do something for his own mental health and he decided he was going to start a pop-up salon, to fundraise for The Rainbow Project. He put a note on Facebook to say, basically, any hairstylist and makeup artists, “can you help me with this please?” At the time I had a bit of spare capacity. I was working as a managing director of a children's car seats retailer, [and] I didn't really love the job to be honest. I was trying to fill my time doing other things to feel a sense of purpose, and so I got in touch with him to help plan and manage his project. The two of us worked incredibly well together, raised loads of money, and realised that we had an amazing connection, loads of ideas and a wish to do something bigger and more permanent.

Photo Credit: Hannah McCallum @Hannahmcallum_media

So fast forward a few months and the universe conspired to mean that I ended up resigning from my job and joined up with Connor to do this on a more permanent basis. We knew that we wanted to be independent and economically sustainable in what we did. We didn't want to be purely reliant on funding. We also wanted to feel our way in terms of working like a business, except we pay bills then use 100 per cent of the profit to help people. We wanted to use the skills we had from our prior professional lives and experiences to be able to create something real, utilise our marketing and creative skills, and create a brand for people to get behind. To kick off our fundraising we came up with our first product, ‘The Coffee Scrub.’ We bought a 20-year-old caravan and spent the summer of 2018 sweating at Ibizan markets selling it in multiple languages. We have an amazing recipe for the scrub, that people love, but we’ve iced it for now until we find an external producer. We’re too flat out to do it ourselves.

In Ibiza I had to learn to live with only the basics, and no mod cons for four months. I came from a four bedroom, detached, massive house, like a doll's house. I came to realise that I didn't need any of that sh*t. You need very little stuff to be happy.

What matters most is how you feel about yourself and what you're doing in the world. Realising that if you simply don't compete with people, just yourself, then you release all that stress, whenever you stop trying to make other people happy, and try to make yourself happy- doing something that is of value and helps people in some way. I was that person that was on a hamster wheel of the milestones society says you've got to achieve. ‘This is what box you've got to have ticked by this prescribed year in your life. If you haven't done this, then somehow you're a failure.’ All of that is utter f*cking bullsh*t. When we first started working together I had started to get to some of those conclusions myself but Connor’s passion and understanding of people and the world meant I opened my eyes and faced some hard realisations about how me and most people in my world had lived in such ignorance of the inequalities and desperate unfairness of how the insatiable greed of unbridled capitalism that we were experiencing was destroying the world. He came to that conclusion a hell of a lot [sooner] than I did. Realising that all that matters is people not things is pure freedom.

What are your goals/aims for Another World Belfast?

Connor: We've got loads of plans but right now we really have centred our focus on making Frees Store as successful as it can be, and really shaping that service to be most useful in meeting the needs of our communities.

In the future, it's never ending in terms of our plans- at some stage we would love to go international and develop programmes to help young adults here and in other countries.

For years we've been working to pull people out of the river and help them in whatever way that we can, and we know that toiletries, underwear and clothing is really a drop in the ocean when it comes to what people really need. We need systemic change, but we want to travel up that river and see why people are falling in. You know, that's sort of the crux of our future work. It's trying and trying to make change happen, and that often starts with, in the words of Whitney Houston, [the belief] that children are our future!

Photo Credit: Connor Kerr @anotherconnor

You often use the slogan of “Show Some Love,” what does that mean to you?

Becky: A common occurrence is when we've just held a boundary online or said something deemed ‘woke’ or ‘controversial’ to stand up for a marginalised person, somebody who doesn't like it will retort with “Well, why don't you just show some love” and to that we say, we are. We're not kowtowing to the racist, white, middle class, probably straight, cisgender dude or sadly often a TERF (trans exclusionary radical feminist) who we happen to have irritated. It’s important to demonstrate strength and loyalty to our marginalised communities and speak up when people are being harmed. We're showing love to the people who are being put down and aren't being heard. Silence is violence, and siding with the oppressor, as people much smarter than us have said.

Connor: Maybe they don't have the same skin colour, the same sexuality or gender or whatever it is. But hopefully [this] type of conversation can expand their minds and they go back into work or sit at the kitchen table and be able to use their voice to say actually shut the f*ck up. People just want an easy life but it’s our job to use our privilege and our platform to address sh*tty comments as they happen. It's just not good enough, you know? It’s also not looking away from hardship, having the courage to look someone in the eye, who the system isn't working for, like maybe rough sleeping and just smile and acknowledge them - that's what showing some love is as well.

The Free Store and Swap Shop are very different, but equally successful initiatives, can you go into some detail about each?

Becky: So the Free Store is specifically for the people who are using the services of our charity partners. [On the other hand] Swap Shop is a public-facing city centre store. Where we sell incredible clothing and also sustainable giftware and merch. One of the key things about Swap Shop is the fact that all our clothing is a tenner. One person may be going in and paying a tenner for a sparkly dress that they’re gonna wear on Saturday night, or they may pay a fiver for it because they brought back the sparkly dress they got for last Saturday night. That’s awesome; and a key part of our model, its a great mechanism for people who aren’t keen on outfit repeating or who are keen to try new looks with low cost commitment. The fact that everything's a tenner also means that it’s great for somebody who maybe is working and/or on a low income but not receiving any help from charities, but are struggling with the cost of living and they need a new coat. However, to go into somewhere like Primark and buy a coat, it's probably not going to be amazing quality. To be able to come to us and get a like-new coat that was originally 70 quid and designed for wet weather, not fast fashion, for a tenner, is a far better option. We don't sell anything that is in any way damaged or looks old or worn out, unless it’s a classic vintage piece obviously.

Another World Belfast recently spoke on a panel on Tuesday November 22 in One Elmwood, and hosted their first pop-up Swap Shop in the Queen’s Students’ Union on Wednesday November 23 as part of European Week of Waste Reduction, funded by Belfast City Council. If you missed this event, visit the permanent city centre Swap Shop, providing students with a sustainable alternative to fast fashion whilst also providing financially viable alternatives for those in need of an affordable option.

With their fantastically coloured hair and electric personalities, it’s clear to see that Becky and Connor are perfectly placed to shake things up through Another World’s many different yet equally successful endeavours. The core message to ‘Show Some Love’ is seen through everything they do, and is a reminder to live with colour and kindness so that systemic change can happen.

Keep up-to-date over on their Instagram : @anotherworldbelfast

Step into Another World Belfast