Stories

What is A Million Stories?  

At A Million Stories, we create unique homeware designs that enable you to reinvent and enjoy your home while supporting great causes. 

We conduct creative storytelling workshops in partnership with refugee and asylum seeker support, mental health and anti-bullying charities, to name a few. 

We listen, share, support, and translate stories into beautiful, sophisticated, arresting designs during our design workshops. The best bit is that a share of the profits goes back to the charities that we work with.  

 

 

The Memories Collection, our most recent story 

We tell real-life stories through bold and innovative homeware design. 

In recent months we've heard the tales of Yousef, a jewellery maker from Aleppo; LuJain, a student of interior design from Douma; and Ibrahim, an architect from Deir Ezzur. 

All three left their homes and the conflict in Syria to find safety for themselves and their families. They're now in the process of laying roots and rebuilding their lives in the UK with support from Tunbridge Wells Welcomes Refugees. Our storytellers arrived in the UK legally through the Home Office Syrian Refugee Resettlement Scheme. 

 

 

Designer wall art collection, wisteria, oranges and lemons, roses, on grey wall

 

Our collaboration with three displaced Syrians 

Primarily, our Memories Collection homeware is a story of hope. Hope through adversity and loss. 

Our protagonists have all endured hardship over many years. This has ranged from losing their homes, businesses and communities, their livelihoods, loved ones, prospects and a basic fundamental sense of safety and security. Despite this, they have shown a real sense of determination to live a good and fulfilling life. 

Collectively, they demonstrate a spirit and belief that there will be a worthwhile future for all of them and their families. They epitomise hope and show that with courage and heart they can and will create a better future for their people and their country. 

  

 

Unique homeware with a heart 

During the workshop, we talked a lot about the things our protagonists enjoyed doing, the happy times in their life, the things they missed and the things they would get back to again when the conditions were right. In short, their memories. 

A design inspired by hope

The inspiration for our luxury cushions and wall art design includes:

The smell of the delicate jasmine flowers in the city of Damascus.
 
Roses and the grapes that grew in the shaded courtyards of their homes in Syria.  
 
The lemon and orange trees that line the streets of their home towns. 
 
The simple times spent chatting and laughing with friends over coffee.
 
The sense of stability brought about by the buildings and architectural sites providing an underlying sense of place, safety, security, permanence, history, belonging, and ownership - a sense of home.
 
Woven into the design are three Arabic words chosen by the three - love, hope and dignity. 
 
A ring that symbolises Yousef's time as a jewellery maker, suspended on a branch of wisteria. 
 
An English plant typical of Kent where he now resides - suspended, on hold, like his life.
 
The bridge of Dier Ezzor, which for so long was a symbol of civic pride, sadly destroyed during the war.