LOCKDOWN LEADER: Anya Hindmarch
Designer Anya Hindmarch has long proven her green credentials, including the launch of that 2007 "I'm NOT A Plastic bag" canvas tote, and by becoming an ambassador for Greenpeace last year. And now she’s doing her bit to ease the global pandemic too, having co-created a News UK- funded Holdster to make life simpler for intensive care nurses and doctors tackling Covid-19.
The Holdster may only cost a tenner but for the frontline medical staff who’ll benefit from it, it’s nothing short of priceless. Aimed for those PPE-clad workers carrying out long shifts, they’ve already proved invaluable for medics in five UK hospitals.
The £10 marvel, co-designed by Professor Hugh Montgomery, the chair of intensive care medicine at UCL, is as simple as it is effective: it allows NHS staff to keep their pens, pagers, phones and loose change on them at all times. It means they don’t have to pause their vital work and hunt around for a phone, pager or pens. News UK is helping to fund 30,000 Holdsters, which as the Times reports, would cover all ICU frontline staff. The paper, and its Sunday edition have already donated £15,000 to the Holdsters Just Giving page, and have asked its readers to donate £10 for one.
“This is an unlikely collaboration, but a wonderful one, as it is purely about function,” Hindmarch told the Times. “Good function is important and makes professional lives easier. It is wonderful that we managed to do this so quickly together, and one of the silver linings is that all sorts of projects like this, which may have taken years to get off the ground normally, are swiftly getting the green light.”
Added a ward nurse, “It means I can see my kids quickly before they go to bed, which makes all the difference on a long shift, for them and for me.”