400 screen printed T-shirts, then caps for a children’s festival: Mayor’s Fund for London

Who they are

The Mayor’s Fund for London is a charity whose work reaches every borough: breakfast clubs in more than 65 London schools, literacy and numeracy projects for 5,000 young Londoners, and programmes on track to reach at least 50,000 young people in the capital’s most disadvantaged communities.

400 T-shirts for events across the city

The Fund asked for 400 T-shirts for a run of events around London. We advised screen printing for the speed of production and the consistency of the repeat print, this was a garment representing the Mayor, so it had to be flawless, and the client wanted to see a sample first.

Screen set-up costs mean we cannot produce one-off screen printed samples, so we agreed a different check: when the first T-shirt came off the line we paused production and emailed a high-resolution photo, with a ten-minute window for a reply before the press had to move on. The approval came back within minutes and the run continued. All 400 were printed on white Gildan GD01 and GD01B T-shirts, and the print came out vivid and clean.

Caps and T-shirts for the London Curriculum festival

For the roll-out of stage two of the London Curriculum programme, a festival was held in London for children from 30 schools, introducing the curriculum to primary pupils for the first time. We were asked for bright blue caps with a fox logo on the front for the children, and bright pink T-shirts with the fox and the words ‘Children’s Festival’ for the organisers.

The T-shirts were Gildan GD05 in Heliconia, chosen because the colour sat close to the event’s branding and the heavy cotton prints well. The caps were Beechfield BB10B in surf blue, adjustable and one-size, so they fit children and adults. Both were screen printed, which spreads the set-up cost across the run; for the caps we used a screen transfer, which leaves a smoother, more durable finish than a standard transfer.

Why the print had to be exact

The Mayor's Fund for London is a high-profile organisation funded by the Mayor, working across the capital, and over the following three years it expected to find more than 1,500 jobs and opportunities for unemployed young Londoners.

A garment carrying that name is seen alongside City Hall. It raised the bar on the print rather than the deadline, and it is why both sides stayed available while production started.

“Our event was on Thursday and it went brilliantly well! The children looked FANTASTIC wearing the caps! The T-Shirts were brilliant too. Such an eye-popping colour.”

— Catherine Black, Mayor’s Fund for London