About Stephanie
Stephanie Graham is the Founder and CEO of Dundee Community Craft CIC and Natla Jewellery Studio. She is a Jewellery and Service Designer from Dundee. She attended Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design and Graduated with a Masters in Product Design in 2021. While at University, Stephanie was awarded two Scholarships from the Carnegie Trust and the Dundee Rotary Club.
Stephanie worked as a summer intern in the Scottish Parliament in the Summer of 2022 and has won awards for her business, including, The Centre of Entrepreneurship at the University of Dundee for the New Ideas Award and the McGhee Award. She has also been named NatWest WISE100 2023: Top women in social enterprise.
She saw a need for a new service in Dundee to help tackle some of Dundee’s most complex problems, such as poverty, homelessness, unemployment, poor mental health and substance misuse. In August 2022, Stephanie set up Dundee Community Craft CIC.
About Dundee Community Craft
Dundee has been dubbed the drug death capital of Europe by many mainstream media outlets. In 2019, The Courier reported Dundee as having one of the highest suicide rates in mainland Scotland. Both of these issues are complex and exist co-morbidly. While we do not claim to have a silver bullet, we do think we have a small part of the solution with Dundee Community Craft.
We provide a range of bespoke crafts courses for our clients. Our courses provide a safe space, teach skills, provide relaxation and improve overall mental well-being.
Our social aims are to give voice and visibility to our community artisans whose work you can buy in our online shop and can be found at Dundee Contemporary Arts and the Cambo Heritage Trust.
We provide craft education, employment and volunteering opportunities to those we serve in the community. We partner with third and public-sector organisations to provide craft workshops to increase confidence, build resilience and create communities centred around providing craft education.
About Stephanie Graham
Stephanie established her first brand Natla Jewellery Studio in 2021. She believes that craftsmanship can be used as a method for building mental resilience, helping with problem-solving skills, and as a form of mindfulness.
In December 2023, Stephanie decided that she no longer wanted to hide behind a brand name which hid who she was. She explains that, when she first started on her journey, she suffered from low self esteem as the result of being involved in an accident. Over time, she found a way to accept and process what happened and preaches self love, self compassion and self acceptance as a vital method for healing. :) She hopes that through buying and wearing her work, she can send and remind her clients of these three messages:
Forgive yourself.
Love yourself
Accept and be unapologetically, yourself (because authenticity is COOL).
All profits from the sale of Stephanie’s work help support her as a Social Euntrepeneur and is an extra stream of revenue which financially supports her to be able to run the community interest company she founded, Dundee Community Craft.
“I centre my design philosophy around valuing the imperfect, the impermanent and the incomplete and holding authenticity above all.”
— Stephanie Graham
