Happy Scrubs’ art auction helping bring joy to care homes
Happy Scrubs, a new social enterprise that creates colourful, inspiring health-worker scrubs for members of the public to buy and send to a care home of their choice has launched with a mission to bring joy and happiness to carers and the people they care for.
To mark the launch, celebrated artists including Murugiah, Morag Myerscough, Rude, Supermundane, and Marcus Walters have each created a unique, joyful piece of art inspired by Happy Scrubs. The artworks have been painted up as murals around Walthamstow in London to brighten up public areas and will also appear nationally on sites throughout cities in the UK including London, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Cardiff.
Starting on 15th July, the original art will be auctioned by The Auction Collective and sold as limited edition prints by They Made This, to generate funds for the creation and distribution of Happy Scrubs to care homes across the UK.
Happy Scrubs is the brainchild of Harry Wright, a young entrepreneur who started his career as a ballet dancer but dropped out due to the stresses and strains of the ballet dancing lifestyle. Frustrated in finding his real calling due to the pandemic he contacted mentoring organisation OKO to help him explore how he could achieve success in his real passion, tailoring.
During the pandemic, Harry, alongside his mother, had made 3,000 face masks, raising £3,500 for local Kent charity Hospice in the Weald. He was highly conscious that with all the PPE produced for hospitals over the past year, care homes relying on donations of scrubs have missed out.
Harry’s OKO mentor and business partner Dave Evans helped Harry identify and realise his passion for being creative and helping people and through that Happy Scrubs was born. It combines Harry’s love for performing and design and his desire to bring joy to carers and patients alike.
Commenting on the launch, Harry said, “I trained as a ballet dancer but I struggled with the pressures that come with being a professional dancer. I dropped out but then was a bit lost and not sure about what to do next. I worked briefly in hospitality but lost my job with the start of the pandemic and was more lost than ever. I wanted to be a tailor but couldn’t see how that could happen in lockdown.
“I heard about OKO and got in touch to see if they could help. My journey with them has been amazing and I am delighted that we’re launching Happy Scrubs and helping bring some joy to our care industry and industry users. Care staff have had such a tough time during the pandemic I want to show that people are thinking of them and appreciate their incredible hard work and dedication”.
Dave Evans, CEO at OKO & Co-founder and Director at Happy Scrubs, said “When I met Harry I could see immediately that there was a huge creativity in him and that he was full of potential. He’d struggled with his ballet career and lost his way, not helped by lockdown and the subsequent feeling of helplessness that he suffered with. It has been a pleasure and an honour to work alongside Harry and help bring Happy Scrubs to life – it’s an amazing initiative which I know will be a great success.
“For me, Harry is testament to the opportunity that lies in directly injecting both knowledge and support to our young people, and all it took from me was some time, empathy and the network that I have built over the past 20 years. OKO exists to enable every working person and company to provide that instant and direct injection of support and knowledge to our young at a time where it has never been more needed.”
