Library of Things: Replication Playbook for green, inclusive high streets activation

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In the context of struggling post-lockdown high street businesses and jobs, the climate/ecological emergency and systemic inequalities, Library of Things (LoT) is seeking funding for a project that increases its capability to be a green, inclusive high streets activator.**About Library of Things**LoT helps people save money, reduce waste and activate their local high street by:• affordably renting 50 quality products like Bosch drills, Stihl strimmers and Brother sewing machines from kiosks in high street hubs like event spaces or second-hand shops• delivering training programmes for skills like DIY, repair & sewing with local people**How it works**1. Hear about LoT from a friend, in the press/social media or just walking by2. Browse the website to reserve products. Pay-per-day to rent the product-- just 5% of the cost of buying it!3. Collect and return products from local self-serve kiosk. Find it in a Host Hub on your high street eg. events space, second-hand shop. Be assured that products are regularly cleaned/ maintained by trained professionals4. \[COMING SOON VIA THIS PROJECT: View your community's impact and join skills training programmes\]Having developed a replicable model that is now launching and operating in Host Hubs across London, and having received 300+ requests from businesses and communities in other cities, LoT is planning its expansion to high streets across UK cities like Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester etc.**The project**To enable this expansion to happen faster, more viably, and more impactfully, LoT wants to build a _Replication Playbook._This is a set of three pieces of development for LoT's software:1. Heatmaps to ensure communities that want a LoT can self-identify, and to help LoT's team identify hotspots of community interest and potential Host Hubs in new cities2. Live Impact Dashboards to clearly communicate to users and Host Hubs the economic, community and environmental impact of LoT in their neighbourhood3. Digital Skills Training Module for LoT users, in order to • facilitate product rental through increased skills/confidence;• reduce programme delivery costs to LoT, making the skills programme viable at scale;• increase the impact: unlocking greater numbers and diversity of participants, and creating more local jobs.**Why this helps COVID-19 recovery** Many high street businesses and jobs, struggling even pre-pandemic, are now in tatters. 20,000 shop units that closed in lockdown won't reopen. In the first half of 2020, UK retailers axed [24,000+ jobs][0]; experts warn this is the 'tip of the iceberg'. High streets urgently need innovative services creating jobs/footfall-- plus reskilling programmes for unemployed.Through this project, LoT will:• increase revenue/ footfall to high street community hubs by 50% against pre-lockdown levels-- to 7500 extra visits and £6000 revenue/year.• involve communities in the expansion, impact and skills development of its own service, setting the precedent for other high street services to do the same at this key moment of transition• COVID-19 has also increased carbon-intensive, wasteful behaviours with Amazonsales surging to $11,000/second and increased single-use packaging/PPE consumption. It's more important than ever that we scale impactful waste prevention.[0]: https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2020/07/over-24000-jobs-scrapped-due-to-retail-administrations/#:~:text=New%20research%20has%20found%20that,collapse%20of%20some%20major%20businesses.