Written by - To raise awareness for Mental Health
- Provide a creative platform for young people
- Create a community to overcome obstacles
- spawn a foundation to focus on our community work
This month we marked Mental Health Awareness Week with a chat with Bill Nichols and Erin Anderson – Howe from DRM Clothing. Based in Rugby the company raise awareness for mental health, with 25% of profits supporting the charity.
DRM Clothing have been supported through our Creative Futures business incubator at 1 Mill Street. Learn about the business support here.
Watch the interview below:
For Mental Health Support and more about DRM Clothing click here: https://linktr.ee/wearedrm
Read the interview below:
So I’m Bill and my name’s Erin and we run DRM, which is a social enterprise that raises awareness and reduces stigma for mental health.
We use clothing to drive change essentially, we use 25% of our profits to go into the community work that we do, so that can be anything from producing resources, running events, or fundraising. Every year we fundraise for a particular mental health charity, that’s one way that we try to raise awareness for mental health.
DRM is a street wear brand, so we have lots of different hoodies, t-shirts, caps, beanies and the inspiration behind it is mental health focused, but in a subtle way, because everyone has mental health we wanted to be the brand not just for people who are feeling maybe mentally unwell, but for people who wanted to support mental health, but didn’t want big text emblazoned on all the designs – so it’s subtle fashionable designs. Â
In 2014 I lost my younger brother Ollie to suicide, and obviously that was a really difficult time for myself and my family, and coming off the back of going through the grieving process, I just wanted to put my energy into something positive and make a memory for my brother. At the time I felt like mental health was something that wasn’t spoken about and anything that I could do to raise awareness for it and maybe help someone to not go through the same thing that I had to go through, I felt like was something I should do. Â
All the designs for DRM merchandise are designed by ourselves, in-house. We then get it digitalized and all of our products are modelled by local people within the community, so there is a really nice ethos at DRM – it’s very community focused, so all the designs are made modelled and photographed by local people in Warwickshire.Â
Everybody has mental health, when you start to think about it. You might think that’s not me – but everybody has mental health, it’s on a spectrum, on a scale where you are – you might have good mental health at the moment and you feel like, well that doesn’t apply to me, but it’s what is keeping you well and what are you doing to keep mentally well. Those are the things that you need to stick to when you’re faced with adversity, and then you go back to doing those things that keep you well. Â
For people that are struggling with their mental health, it’s about getting the the right support and knowledge so they can start doing things that keep them mentally well. So with our blogs and stuff, we have information about those sorts of things, and other people’s stories and experiences of what they’ve been through, and hopefully people can take something from that and then they know, I’m not alone in this, there’s someone else going through what I’m going through. There’s tips and tricks that maybe they can apply to to their life.
If any colleges, schools or businesses even are looking for somebody’s to come in and talk about mental health, with their students, employees, please keep us in mind really – we run workshops and we’re really keen to spread this message. You can contact us on any of our social medias, which is @we-are-DRM, drop us an email or direct message and we’d be happy to see if that’s something we can facilitate.