Beyond the image
June 29, 2009
I mentioned to a friend that I love watching the TV series “Mary, Queen of Charity Shops”, because it’s refreshing to see someone with visionary zeal be determined to radically update the image of charity shops.
This series follows Mary Portas, as she sets out to show Orpington’s ‘Save The Children’ charity shop, that they can set their sights on having a successful flourishing retail business, based upon people donating items of good quality, rather than be a dumping ground for unwanted goods.
The series was successful in giving this charity shop a new face. I thought that Orpington could rename their shop as “Vintage Vogue”, to be more in line with the style of fashionable clothes that Mary has shown them that they can sell. Personally though, I would go further and suggest we re-examine the purpose of these types of shops.
UK charity shops still carry the tag of second-hand clothes consciousness, even though there are exceptions. My suggestion is that they can aspire to think more in terms of refreshing today’s fashion to inspire tomorrow’s trends.
But I guess that what I’m really wanting is to remove any outdated thinking that hangs around the concept of charity, because I sense there’s something better just waiting to be discovered. Charity has long had the connotation of giving to the poor – it exists as long as we believe in the need for that reality.
Look, we are incredible resourceful beings who shape reality from our thinking, and I’m sure we can go much further than updating the image of charity and charity shops.
What if every single registered charity was treated as a self-aware being, that could give us insights into what it wanted to become next? What if a new model of business entrepreneurship is waiting in the wings, waiting to revitalise society?
Everything is energy, everything is communication, everything is the potential of something new waiting to happen. So let’s look at what can be different everyday rather than settle for a hand-me-down consciousness.