Wincanton Primary School Buddy Bench
Neptune Street Furniture has been creating street furniture since the 1960’s and throughout our time in the engineering industry we have consistently been at the forefront of innovation and advances in designs. For the last five years we have become one of the leading manufacturers of the now famous ‘Buddy Benches’. These have become a smash hit in schools up and down the United Kingdom.
Produced from 100% recycled plastic, these benches utilise bright and eye-catching colours while also being incredibly comfortable to sit on. Neptune Street Furniture has adopted a once simple phenomenon and created a whole “Friendship” range dedicated to creating a safe space for school children to go when they are lonely and sad. Furthermore, they reinforce the notion of communication from a young age and help teach children that asking for help is healthy and normal. Additionally, these benches help limit the carbon footprint left behind too, being a sturdy, reliable, recycled material, ensuring it will last a long time, but limit the damage made to the environment.
The concept behind Buddy Benches started in Canada back in 2013 and has since grown into a united global effort to combat loneliness in children. The concept was simple, give children somewhere to sit and visit when they are lacking friends or someone to talk to. This instils a sense of compassion and reinforces the importance of kindness. All while teaching children about talking and listening to people when its needed and to not bottle up your emotions.
Neptune Street Furniture has a large selection of products in their Friendship Range including, but not limited to benches, seats, and planters. These are all made from 100% recycled plastic and come in a variety of bright colours.
Wincanton Primary School, located in Somerset, approached us in late 2020 and enquired whether we could make them a couple of our Buddy Benches, but instead of the standard random colours they asked for all the slats to be in blue as they wanted them to match their school colour. They also further requested, if we could engrave the words “Buddy Bench” onto the middle slat and include two handprints on said benches. These engravings were filled in with white acrylic, which was cut out on our state-of-the-art laser cutter so that the words and handprints would really stand out.
Fast forward one month and Wincanton once again got in contact and commented to us, “We love the buddy benches so much that we would like to order another two exactly the same please” and with that glowing review we got hard at work producing two more benches for them.
These benches come with the options and capabilities to be fully customised in our workshop located in Hampshire, with the opportunity to choose from a vast selection of colours, infills and engraving of your choice so each one we manufacture is truly unique and personal to the school it is going to.