Forget whistling while they work – the team at Kingswood Homes are singing while they work.
They’ve even rewritten the Madness classic Our House, recorded it in a music studio and had a video filmed and edited. It’s all for a good cause – raising awareness of the Great Big House Giveaway in aid of Derian House Children’s Hospice.
Managing director Paul Jones said: “We were thinking of ideas to promote the fact that we’ve teamed up with Derian House to giveaway a brand new home at Our Green Hills development in Feniscowles and I suggested to the team that we make a music video. They picked the song, reworked the lyrics and then recorded the track in a music studio before shooting the video. Personally, I think if we spend a third of our lives at work, work really should be fun and the video shows that working at Kingswood certainly is with lots of the team taking part.”
The house referred to in the Kingswood music video and up for grabs in the Great Big House giveaway prize draw, is a three-bedroom detached Byre 3 worth £250,000. It includes a living room at the front, with a generous combined kitchen / dining / family room extending the width of the property with patio doors leading out to the rear garden. A handy utility/ cloakroom, plus storage space completes the ground floor.
Upstairs, two of the three bedrooms are doubles, with one boasting an en-suite to complement the family bathroom.
Site manager Liam Reilly, who is overseeing construction of the house being given away along with other properties at Green Hills, was the creative brain behind the new lyrics. He’s also the lead vocalist on the track.
“After I suggested we use Our House, Paul said we should rewrite it but I’d already started on the new lyrics so that it references the Great Big House Giveaway,” Liam explained.
“Being in the recording studio was a bit different to my normal day to day work on site but it was a great experience. Who knows we might go for Christmas number one next.”
“With it being for charity, people were happy to get involved – it was so much fun and for a great cause. The bricklayer who’s in the video playing the drums even stayed late to take part. It’s made people appreciate working for Kingswood and helped build staff morale.”
Caroline Taylor, Head of Income, Marketing and Communications at Derian House Children’s Hospice, said: “We are so grateful to our friends at Kingswood Homes, not just for their generosity in giving us a brand new house to raise money for the children we care for, but also for being such good sports.
“The video was created as a surprise for us at Derian House and we absolutely love it! The fact that the whole workforce got involved really means a lot to us. And as well as raising cash for seriously ill children, it helps to raise awareness of our charity.
“It costs £5.7million every year to run services at Derian House and so Kingswood Homes supporting us in this way is vital to ensuring we can continue supporting families now and in the future.”
Kingswood was recently named Housebuilder of the Year in the Insider North West Residential Property Awards.
A rapidly growing business, the company has gone from building 36 homes in the year to March 2020, to 100-plus in the last financial year and is targeting 250 homes a year by 2024-25.
Kingswood’s take on Our House can be watched via their social media channels – Facebook or Instagram.
As Liam’s lyrics suggest, six tickets for the Great Big House Giveaway can be purchased for just £5. There will be a guaranteed winner, to be announced at a gala ball at Hoghton Tower on September 17. For more information about the prize draw see www.derianhouse.co.uk/house. Tickets for the ball are available from £2,500 for a table of 10 from Julia.jeory@kingswoodhomes.uk.com.
