Tell us a bit about yourself and how you came to build such an innovative and creative business

I'm Louise Skajem, co-founder of Resting Reef, an impactful memorial service that allows families to have their loved one or pet's ashes be made into beautiful reef structures that we then place on the seabed to restore endangered marine habitats. I met my co-founder during a dual masters at Imperial College and Royal College of Art, where we studied global innovation design. We got together for a competition that was an initiative by the then Prince Charles, Sir Jony Ive and the RCA. They were asking student alumni to come up with creative ideas tackling climate change. We thought we’d look at supporting native oyster reefs here in the UK to be restored because they were heavily declined. Aura was the one who brought forward the topic of death, because she unfortunately had just lost her father. She said she'd come across this salt urn where you could add ashes and then put it in the ocean, and it dissolves and scatters. But she had this great idea of what if it doesn't dissolve? What if it becomes the foundation for marine life, and then families can engage and connect with it over time?

How did that initial competition idea then develop into today’s award-winning venture?

At first we knew this sounded like a really outside-the-box idea. But I also was aware that the UK and all over the world also had very limited space left for burial plots, so we thought ‘ah, maybe we're dealing with two problems here. Let’s see where that brings us’. That was five years ago, and we became finalists of the competition, finished our masters, won an Innovate UK funding grant to make our first prototypes and went full time on developing the idea further.

Can you tell us a little bit more about the process?

Currently, we're working on crafting our reefs memorials with a community in Bali. We connect with families interested in our service and support them in getting all the paperwork required for having their loved one’s ashes delivered there. On site, we collaborate with the local community who create the moulds from the ash mixed with local elements such as volcanic sand, crushed shells and local cement. They are cast, cured and placed on the seabed, where we continue monitoring. It's very much a scientific restoration project, but also really engaging the public and these families with the process, rather than a governmental, university or an NGO’s responsibility, it’s something that people on a personal level can support and witness bring new life. We've been working from the beginning on opening a site in the UK near Cornwall or Devon, which is in progress, with sites off Scotland and Mexico also in the pipeline.

At what point did you establish your workshop at Mainyard?

In the period after graduating we were based out of my kitchen, which was not ideal as we use materials like horse ashes or cement, and a lot of the prototypes were just stored in cupboards. It was very clear that we needed somewhere that allowed us to keep the materials, continue prototyping, getting our hands dirty and was a safe space. We looked at lot, but many of them were actually repurposed office spaces so they had things like carpets. They were not actually maker spaces. I saw this marketing about Mainyard and we saw it was also subsidised by the Arts Council. That meant a lot for us as we were very limited on funding. It also creates a sense of security knowing that at least we have a place to go now, and not all of this goes back into my kitchen if things get tough.

How has being in Hackney Wick had an impact on your business?

We really appreciate that there is the startup community around here. Being alumni from Imperial and Royal College of Art, there are multiple startups like us within Maynard, and we also have Notpla just down the road. They are role models and mentors for us, so it's great to have them nearby, to see where they started and where they've come. When we first came here, it was just white walls. The flower shop, Repot, was just setting up their space and then Print BiG UK arrived next door. We've had a lot of interesting conversations about running community workshops in Repot, and we’re always knocking on the door to the printers at the last minute to create some flyers because we're going to an event, so feeling part of this community has always been super valuable.

Find out more about Resting Reef: restingreef.co.uk
and follow them on Instagram: @restingreef