Photo: NBC Boston
Project Home Again helps low-income families get on their feet again with furniture from donors such as movie companies finished with their stage sets.
I love writing about experiments that someone has thought up to help people in need. Usually the initiatives blossom and flourish, like the one I will tell you about today. But now is as good a time as any to admit that occasionally an experiment fails (consider one I wrote about helping displaced miners learn coding). I guess, for me, the bottom line is that you have to risk failure in order to move forward. No successes without failures.
In Lawrence and Andover, Mass., success seems to follow each new effort that Project Home Again tries out.
As Judith Kogan reported at WGBH, “When a film is made, sets are built and decorated to make a story seem real. And now in Massachusetts, when filming is done, those sets are having real-life impact, empowering people trying to rebuild their lives to design their own homes, free of charge. …
” ‘Say we’re decorating a dining room,’ explained Melissa Cooperman, a set decorator and buyer for films and commercials shot in Massachusetts. ‘We’ll need a table, we’ll need chairs, carpet, dishes, glasses, artwork for the wall, lighting, curtains, and window treatments.’
“When a film wraps, the producer needs to decide what to do with the accumulated stuff, often an abundance of home goods.
“Cooperman worked on the 2014 television mini-series ‘Olive Kitteridge,’ which was shot on the North Shore and Cape Ann. It had a fully-furnished house and apartment, and fully-stocked drug store.
“ ‘They said they wanted to donate everything,’ Cooperman recalled. …
“Project Home Again gets goods to where they’re most needed and wanted, partnering with about 400 social workers, founder and president Nancy Kanell said.”
Social workers ” ‘go to their clients’ homes with a checklist of everything that we stock. And they sit down with their clients and they go room by room, and decide what they need to make them feel comfortable,’ Kanell said. …
“Project Home Again serves refugees, veterans, people transitioning from halfway houses, and survivors of domestic violence.
“ ‘When they come here,’ Kanell said of the abuse survivors, ‘we roll out the red carpet.’ … Kanell remembers one particular survivor: ‘She came on a day we were closed because she was very afraid of her own shadow at that point. And she just wanted beige. She said she didn’t like color, didn’t deserve color.’
“Kanell and Cooperman found her a green chair.
“ ‘A green that people would be either very drawn to or very opposed to having in their home,’ Kanell recalled. ‘But there was something about it she liked. She sat down on it.’ …
“Kanell and Cooperman started pulling colorful rugs and a colorful table to go with the chair. …
“ ‘She was uncomfortable with it, but you could see she was starting to like it. And I made a deal with her that she could take it home, and if she didn’t like the color, I’d come and pick it up, and she could get all beige things. We even had colorful pots and pans for her! And she called about two weeks later. She said she and her son were so happy they were living in a colorful world, and it changed their outlook.’
“Project Home Again hasn’t just been changing lives. It’s changed the industry as well. Many set decorators now have Nancy Kanell on speed dial so they can get rid of their stuff as quickly as possible.” More here.
Suzanne's Mom's Blog 
Awesome idea!
Yes, many winners!
This makes such good sense–it never occurs to me to wonder what happens to all that stuff in TV and movies but I can’t think of a better way to disperse it. And I love the story about the woman learning to embrace color in her life!
Wonderful that people she didn’t even know worked to convince her she “deserved” more than beige.
There are going to be failures. That shouldn’t put a stop to ideas and projects. And giving set furniture to low-income folks is a terrific idea.
What fun if someone got a room of furniture from a favorite film.