What the state withheld in his youth, Deshaun now stitches into his workshops: patience, empathy, and consideration. Marie Staunton reports
Each Friday, in a quiet corner of Camberwell Leisure Centre, Mr. D Woolens, aka Deshaun Smith, 25, teaches knitting and crochet with the kind of gentle attention that transforms more than just yarn. One of his students, Carmeleta, admits she was surprised at first. “A young man, and so good at it, “she laughs. “He’s bold, and he explains things clearly. I struggled at the start, but now he can’t stop me.” Deshaun also runs a shop in Rye Lane Market in Peckham, selling handmade crochet and knitwear. However, behind the business lies a story of resilience. His mother, a seamstress, taught him early that making things with your hands could mean pride — and pocket money. When Deshaun was seven, he picked up a knitting needle. By nine, he’d made his first hat. “I didn’t like it enough to wear,” he says. “So, Mum showed it to one of her clients and sold it. Gave me the money. She wanted me to value what I make.” At primary school, he gave pieces to favourite teachers. Some secretly paid him via his schoolbag, always with his mother’s permission. He is one of seven children and his autism meant that his boisterous siblings were often overwhelming. So, his mother would take him with her when she went out on family visits. Once he started knitting, he was content. “She could take me anywhere. I’d just sit quietly, hands busy.” When Deshaun was 13, his mother developed dementia. He was taken into foster care. “I’d see Mum on the street struggling with her shopping like she still had seven kids. If I asked foster carers to give her a lift home, they’d say no, the social worker wouldn’t like it”. Care was not abusive, he says, but indifferent. Foster parents had their jobs, their church. “No time for me. I had to grow up fast, emotionally and financially.” He kept knitting. At Brent Knoll special needs school, a younger pupil, Kia, watched him in silence. Eventually, he began to teach her. Later, at Lewisham College, he started knitting clubs for students and staff in an empty classroom at lunchtime. His college tutor took Deshaun and others to meet employers, but when special needs children walked in, interviewers lost interest. Their eyes went blank “like a blind snapping shut”. Early jobs had no room for how Deshaun learns: autistic, dyslexic and visual. “Put me in online training, I won’t get it. Show me, I’m fine, but employers wouldn’t adjust. “ After fruitless referrals from the Jobcentre, he was labelled “unfit for work”. “That stung,” he says. That was when he thought: “Why not do what I love? Sell what I make, like Mum did.” Then came the turning point. At a local knitting group he met Paul, from Bell Gardens Community Centre. “They were about to shut unless they had enough activity. I offered some taster sessions. After two, they said ‘let’s hire you.’ That was 2018.” Now Deshaun teaches in centres across Camberwell and Peckham. One of his longest-standing collaborators is Sue, a former teaching assistant, who joined the Bell Gardens sessions to try crocheting again. “He was so patient,” she says. “I’d never managed it before.” Now, she helps Deshaun at his stall at Camberwell festivals and the Rye Lane shop. They bonded over more than wool. Both had mothers with dementia. “There’s a shared understanding,” Sue says. His classes draw people of all ages — retired, younger adults, even children. “After COVID, a lot of people forgot how to socialise. At my workshops they connect again.” Carmeleta, who worked for an autism charity, often chats with him about the inflexible systems he has to deal with. “Deshaun gives others the empathy and patience he never got from the bureaucracy autistic people have to navigate.” For Deshaun, knitting is more than a craft. It is therapy, livelihood, and independence. “It helps my autism and dyslexia. It calms me. And even if I don’t earn loads, I’d rather do what I love.”
Mending what he missed
