Thanks again to the RAWK staff for their support and for allowing me to share this exciting publishing project with you all.
The Kickstarter has already met its target but you still have
until 12 November to pre-order a copy for the special launch price of £10 (the RRP will be £11.99).
As many of you already know, I have a passion for making handmade, hand-crafted Liverpool banners, a passion which goes back many years. More recently, this became a
blossoming side-business alongside my day job as a teacher, and in the last 18 months, I have crafted more than 55 bespoke, handmade banners for people in Liverpool and around the globe.
If you aren't familiar with the story of how it came about, here's the lowdown, in my own words... it's not much of an exaggeration to say that my bannering pastime saved my life:
At the start of 2020, I could not possibly have foreseen that, in a few months time, I would be creating my own part-time business. I certainly couldn't have imagined that I would have written a book about it. It’s all something I’ve fallen into almost by accident, but so far, touch wood, it seems to be going pretty well.
In 2016 (at the age of 38), I was in the shape of my life. Recently married to the woman of my dreams, I was running half marathons every Sunday and a couple of 10K runs in the week, gym three times a week - I felt absolutely great. Out of the blue, I then suffered a serious back injury (triple lumbar disc herniation) that began a spiral into chronic pain, and eventually left me unable to exercise at all and hobbling around with a walking stick.
Coupled with a painful tragedy in my personal life in 2018 (when we lost our first baby daughter Hope, at 20 weeks), later coping with becoming a new dad in December 2019, and dealing with a stressful career (I teach French and Latin in a secondary school on the Wirral), this took a toll on my mental health, and in January of 2020, I hit breaking point, stumbling and falling headlong into the fog of depression, unable to do my job effectively. Naturally, the Covid-19 pandemic, which followed in quick succession barely a month later, only served to shine a spotlight on my problems.
At the same time as all these challenges arose in my life, my coping mechanism – running, which had allowed me to decompress whenever I needed – had been cruelly snatched away. My other great release – going to games at Anfield to sing my heart out – had also disappeared out of the blue. I desperately needed a new focus and something to distract me from pain in the evenings (when it was generally at its worst).
A conversation with a counsellor got me thinking about ways I had successfully done this in the past, and it was at this point that my banner-making occurred to me. I have followed Liverpool all my life, and have been a regular match-goer for over 20 years. I had created several banners in this time, progressing from paint on a red sheet, produced during the Houllier years and reading La Machine Rouge en pleine force, to my first stitched banner, Our Lads Have Come From All Over The Place, in 2005. More recently, I made my Deus Nobis Haec Otia Fecit banner in the summer of 2019 (my first for several years) and found that I could really get lost in the focus on the task – a little like how I used to be able to zone out when running. Perhaps this could be part of the answer to my difficulties?
But bannering is not a cheap hobby, with each one costing up to £120 in materials and sewing costs. It wasn’t a hobby I could afford unless I looked into ways of making it pay for itself – so I started putting myself ‘out there’ a bit (on RedAndWhiteKop.com and on Instagram, where I had ‘met’ – we still haven’t actually met – the inspiring and supremely talented Emma Norbury) and seeing if there was a market for my work.
It turns out there was, and from my first commission, I have since taken on a further 50 (as of July 2021), with around 40 more names on my waiting list. The timing was perfect – when we had the best team for a generation, dominating the league – and lockdown had suddenly snatched football away. Lots of Reds wanted to get ready for when the football – and number 19 – finally came home to Anfield, and my old-fashioned, premium approach seemed to hit a gap in the market.
In the meantime, I also built my own website – handmadebanners.co.uk - to showcase my work (learning some new IT skills in the process) and began to build a loyal and enthusiastic following on social media.
My reasons for writing this book are two-fold – to explain my processes to those who would like to take on the challenge of making a banner for themselves, and to tell the stories behind the banners and the loyal Reds who commissioned them.
As one year began, I had no idea that I would start the next with a blossoming side-business. Another year on, I have no idea quite where this journey may lead me, but I am certainly enjoying it at the moment – I have come to treasure those couple of hours each evening when my school marking is all done, my baby daughter is in bed, and I can lose myself in my crafting.
So to all those who have commissioned a banner, to those who have cheered me on from the side-lines, and to all those who have helped to fund this book to bring my work to a wider public, thank you. It means more to me than you will ever know.
You’ll Never Walk Alone
As I set out on this unlikely journey, I chronicled my progress every step of the way, with hundreds of photographs of my work and a pen-pic of every single creation, the creative process, and what had inspired each work.
I have now compiled my first book -
"A Labour of Love - The Craftsman of the Kop" - and it is finished, type-set and ready for publication.
And this is where you come in...The cost of bringing the book to fruition is about £5000, of which I have £2000 to contribute myself. I have successfully funded the rest through Kickstarter, but it is not too late to get on board.
The way the Kickstarter campaign works is essentially a pre-sale of the book. You can pledge £10 to my Kickstarter campaign, and in return, you will receive a first edition of the book as soon as it launches. £12 will get you a signed edition, and £15 will be rewarded with a personal dedication too (ideal for if you want to gift it to someone). If you are feeling frisky, a £20 pledge will secure a signed edition plus an invitation to the launch event in Liverpool (date and venue TBA), while a £40 pledge will get you two signed first editions with personal dedications, a digital PDF edition to read on your iPad ahead of the physical launch, AND two invitations to the launch event.There are just 17 days left to secure your copy of the book before the 12 Novermber for the launch price of £10 (the RRP is £11.99).You can also share the living daylights out of it on your social media too.
The URL is
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/marksweatman/a-labour-of-love-the-craftsman-of-the-kopJust to whet your appetite a little more, here are a few pages from the book - the cover and blurb, of course, and some examples of the work I've created within.
I will, of course, be back to provide further updates when the book goes to press and with details of the launch etc.
