About:
Flow Living
Hello! We are Paul and Rachael.
We set up Flow Living as we wanted to live an expanded version of our life together that also helped the environment and local community. Flow Living is evolving slowly and mindfully alongside our part-time ‘day jobs’.
We are here for the long-term so have decided to take our time and figure out the best ways to offer our services along the way.
Our mission is to make healthy and environmentally-conscious living available to everyone and improve the local area in the process.
We are passionate about:
- Eating delicious wholesome food
- Creating beautiful and practical homes that serve wellbeing
- Supporting mental health and personal growth
- Enjoyable mindful exercise which is often in nature
We appreciate that these elements affect each other. It makes sense for us to offer services that consider the interplay of these elements rather than in isolation.
About us:
We met in Edinburgh at Ainslie Park Leisure Centre where we were both teaching swimming. After lots of smiles and chats every Saturday, we decided to meet up outside of work. So began an enduring love story and we celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary in 2023. In 2024, we welcomed our furry son, Paddington, our miniature golden doodle who we are training as a therapy dog!
We are a good match for each other and balance each other out with our personality traits and skills! We both share a desire to do good, listen to people properly and see things from other people’s points of view. We also acknowledge that we are only human, we make mistakes and it’s how we learn from them that matters. We also respect the need we both have for eating regularly! Most of the few arguments we have happen when we are ‘hangry’!
We are both fully insured for all of the services we offer and also hold enhanced DBS certificates so you can have peace of mind.
Vision:
We are both passionate about the environment so we try to tread as lightly as possible in everything we do. We are trained beekeepers and are looking forward to using our allotment plot to eventually resume beekeeping there.
We...
- Have solar panels on our house roof
- Have a living roof on our garden room
- Grow pollinator-friendly plants
- Have two nature ponds and unkempt areas of garden for frogs, hedgehogs and bugs
- Compost (we have four Dalek bins!)
- Have an older used electric car and
- buy second-hand items where possible
Our ultimate aim is to create a closed-loop system of zero waste.
We want our business to ‘give back’ to the environment and the community. By using the Frere Road Community Centre for our events, the venue hire fee contributes to the costs of maintaining the centre. We want to support people within our business services and give opportunities to those who, for various reasons, face obstacles to employment. We can help them to gain voluntary experience or paid work opportunities. There are a broad range of opportunities that people could potentially become involved in. For example, growing produce on our allotment, learning some beekeeping skills, delivering honey by bike…
We are particularly keen to employ the services of those who are autistic, have ADHD and/ or mental health needs. We would likely look for:
- Social media content creators/manager
- Artists whose work could be sold to interior design course participants/clients
- Photographers
- Administrative assistants
- Food preppers/ servers within our supper club
The Buckland Review, published on 28th February 2024, focused on supporting employers to recruit and retain autistic people and addressing the autism employment gap. Just 3 in 10 autistic adults are in work, compared to 5 in 10 for all disabled people and 8 in 10 of all non-disabled people. As our venture grows, we hope to be able to pay people to work with us on a regular basis.
We are also inspired by schemes like ‘Fair Shot’ (see: www.fairshot.co.uk ) in Covent Garden, London who are a social enterprise café and registered charity that aims to change the lives of young adults with learning disabilities and/ or autism through speciality coffee.
Paul has volunteered as a kitchen assistant at the Mind Café in Ashton-Under-Lyne where he supported adults with learning disabilities and mental health needs.