Hi, my name is Bianca

The full story…

 I graduated from Leeds Arts University in 2018 with a degree in Printed Textiles and Surface Pattern Design which was the perfect place to explore my love for print, colour, and pattern which I then continued to develop with my product-based business, Binks Design, which is where I create slow-made homeware and lifestyle products to help you curate a more balanced sense of wellbeing in your home! 

It is through my work with Binks Design that I found myself selling my products at pop-up markets and was truly inspired to host one of my own where I could bring together the amazing creative community that I have found in Leeds to showcase all the amazing things that they are doing. I originally booked in a date in November 2020 at the start of that year to give me time to plan and organise such an event, but then the world got in the way!  

During the early stages of the pandemic we all had a lot more time to focus on our passions and for me that was all about raising awareness of mental health. As a sufferer of anxiety and depression, I have always used my creative work as both a remedy to the worst of my struggles but also to explore the positives and negatives that can influence the way we deal with our own difficulties. 

2020 was a year with lots of different things to unpack and understand from the realities of living through a global pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, and ongoing sustainability and climate change worries and I was increasingly interested in how the way we consume can impact on these things either positively or negatively and how we have the power to make a real change. This is now the key ethos behind what has become Mindful Market UK – supporting small and independent businesses, making inclusive shopping easier and more accessible, and helping you find products that bring you real benefits for your mental health and well-being.

During the first year of Mindful Market UK, I worked with over 200 small businesses, each mindful in their own way, that enable us to shop more mindfully with them and have helped them get access to wider audience through the Online Mindful Markets and at the end of 2021 our very first in-person pop up Mindful Markets at IF UP NORTH Café in Leeds! 

2022 brought a year long residency at the iconic, historical Leeds Kirkgate Market. With it being already the best place to shop more mindfully in Leeds it felt very fitting that the first full year of in-person events was to take place there. I hosted 6 amazing markets!

During 2023 I will continue to connect conscious shoppers with the best possible products from mindful small businesses and also improve the educational aspects I bring to these businesses to help them implement more ways in which they can be mindful within their business and therefore help us to continue to shop more mindfully with them!