Context and references

When treating a subject like homelessness, with such a personal and social aspect to it, I think primary research is essential, as the best way to get to know about your subject matter is talking to the ones who live that reality everyday, and who are at the same time those for which your design is going to be useful and helpful.

As I just said, for this project primary research is going to be essential, and that means going to meet and talk to homeless people. This is something that I've already practiced last year during my volunteering experience at Madrid, already having some insight into how life as a homeless person is. When approaching and talking to homeless people, you need to follow some "rules", as those persons usually find It difficult to talk about their situation and to get to talk to people that they don't know, not being used to talk with people, being so disconnected from society as they are. When thinking of where to find homeless people to talk to, the street can be one of the best options, and the option I've experienced for the moment. In Kingston precisely, there are some of them around Clarence Street and the bridge of the train station, which could be an option to go and talk to, knowing that some homeless people are unwilling to talk to you, which is something to take into account.

Another place where to talk to homeless people are shelters or B&B's, as well as local ONGs and associations, which are places homeless people visit regularly, if not everyday. In those ONGs and associations, apart from being able to talk directly to homeless people, you can also get to talk to the staff that works there, people that spent most of their time in direct contact with those homeless people and that probably know and could tell you about the reality of homelessness almost as good as a homeless person could do. Some of those associations are: Homeless Link, Crisis, Streets of London, StreetLink or Not second night out, all devoted to helping homeless people to get out of the streets, housing homeless people, help homeless people find a job, as well as pushing local authorities to act and takle homelessness with effective politics.

In Kingston particularly, Kingston Churches Action on Homelessness (KCAH) is the most important association, that works with homeless people of the borough, providing a drop in advice service Monday to Friday (help with housing and job), emergency clothes and food, as well as running a winter night shelter. SPEAR is another association that works in South West London, helping homeless people to quickly find an accommodation, as well as giving support with finding a job.

We can also have a look at art and design references:

"Roofless" by Bethany Williams

Bethany Williams is a young British fashion designer, who's work is deeply orientated towards society and social issues, looking into how design and more precisely fashion, can be a tool to change and improve our society.

For her line "Roofless", she established a cycle of exchange, where homeless people she met during her volunteering in a monday night Soup Kitchen in Brighton, where she was studying, would donate her one of their pieces of clothing, in exchange for three warm second hand items of clothing. She then added a "second skin" to the pieces she collected, making them reversible by using hardware store materials, that would reinvigorate those pieces of clothing, creating a newly improved form of shelter, ironically suiting the new owner's requirements at the same time as keeping the essence of the

previous owners' items. The new pieces are also embroidered with statements that reflect on the previous owners life and issues, as: "He shoots up every night to keep warm", with which Bethany reinsures that the issue she's talking about is not masked in those new items.

The result are pieces of clothing that clearly reflect the story of their previous owners, and remind their new owners of that issue, creating a connection between them and the homeless people that donated that item, that inevitably remains theirs, but that at the same time is now someone elses, that would always have a memory of that person in need.

In her second collection, "A new life, Bethany now explores the term of "community", and how those can be built and promoted. The focus was on the need to retain local community and character, especially in a city like London, where local quirk is fast diminishing almost to the point of disappearing, because of rapid property development. Bethany got assigned a shop in Wood Street (Walthamstow), as part of a project with other artists and designers to work on reinforcing the sense of community in the area. She asked people to donate items that were valuable to them, and with those items donated to the shop, Bethany created a collection based on the history and the community of Wood Street, taking insights into individual people's lifes, that would then be used to build a sense of community without loosing people's character.

An example is a man who was a huge fan of collecting toy horses, and who donated a small part of the collection to Bethany shop. Those horses where then used in the different garments Bethany created for her collection, allowing others members of the community of Wood Street to feel included in that personal insight of the man's life by wearing pieces of clothing inspired by his own donation. What seems interesting to me from this second collection, even if not directly related to homelessness, is how you can build or reinforce the sense of community, something that is absolutely inexistent in between homeless people.

Museum of Us by Fieldwork Facility

In that same idea of how to create and strengthen the sense of community is a project by Fieldwork Facility, a design studio working for uncharted territories, called "Museum of Us", a campaign, exhibition and project space, as well as a program of events, designed to bring together members of the local community of Old Kent Road (Southwark), be it residents, local action groups or shop owners. The museum is a refurbished shop in Old Kent Road, transformed into a democratic space to enable conversation between all the actors of that area, talking about the future of it, taking decisions for long term plans in the area, and finding possible solutions to existing problems.

Something that I liked and that strikes my attention, is that a project that is focused in such a deep subject as building a community, had his identity manifested by a simple sticker, with everything related to the project inspired by stickers and sticker sheets. This enabled to include everyone into the conversations, a kind of celebration of inclusivity.

Exactitudes by Aris Versluis and Ellie Uyttenbroek

This project is a striking visual record of more than 3000 neatly differentiated social types that the photographer Ari Versluis and the stylist Ellie Uyttenbroek have documented over the last twenty years. They first start by discerning specific dress codes, behaviors or attitudes that belong or define specific urban tribes or sub-cultures. Once they recognise an individual that fits the characteristics of a given group, they invite such person to be photographed at the studio with the only requirement of wearing the very exact same clothes s/he was wearing at the time they first encountered.

This results into a massive compilation of photographies, classified and arranged into different groups, for each of the urban tribes that the artists have identified, the whole being really impressive visually, as the individuals seem too similar the ones to the others. Exactitudes questions how the "self" is constructed in such a highly volatile and complex social environment like ours. It is really interesting to see how notions like uniformity and individuality come against each other in this project, and how even if we want to differentiate ourselves, we also need to belong to a specific group.

If we apply this to homeless people, lots of questionsand thoughts come to my mind: "Is there a sense of community in between homeless people, and if not, is it possible to build one?". When thinking of homeless people, lots of people see them the same way: as crazy people with ripped clothes living in the street, who are most of the time drunk, etc..., we put all homeless people in the same box (with this idea of classifying people into groups shown in this project), but why can't we see behind that stereotype, why can't we the think of them as individuals, all different the ones to the others?

Eyeball cards by William Hogan and David Titlow

This could be seen as a weird reference to look at when doing a project about homelessness, but I think it is really interesting to think about how weird and unusual a business card can be for a homeless person. How an object that is extremely banal for someone as a bussiness man , who uses them everyday without

even paying attention to it, can be seen as

something strange and unknown for a homeless person if we think about their employment status.. I think that contrast between how some of us see the world and the objects that surround us and how homeless people could look at the same object in a completely different way is something really interesting and that also

tells a lot about how different our realities are then. This example in particular is even more interesting, as eyeball cards are something extremely personal, and the ones showed and displayed in that book even more. They're something specifically made for someone, almost custom-made, which is something unknown for homeless people, who survive with what others give to them, be it clothes, a place where to stay, etc...

I think this type of contrasts could be really interesting to look at and investigate further during the project.

"The hidden homelessness, crisis in California" by VICE, "How poor people survive in the USA" by DW and "Verano en el punto de mira" by Cuatro

When researching about homelessness and looking for information about the subject for my blog, I found a VICE documentary on Youtube talking about hidden homelessness in California, and about how some people, even if they were working, still can't afford paying a rent for a house, and find themselves forced to live in their cars or vans. These people are then not counted in the number of rough sleepers that is what we normally call homeless, even though, as this documentary shows, homeless can go far beyond rough sleeping and the issue of homelessness is much bigger than what the numbers could tell. How do these people live homelessness, is it any different to rough sleepers and how?

After watching the documentary I immediately remembered about a problem that happens summer after summer in the Spanish island of Ibiza,and that is shown in the documentary "El verano en el punto de mira" where lots of people form other parts of Spain go to work during the summer, when thousands of tourist get themselves to the island. The problem is that the prices of housing and accommodation in the island becojme extremely high in summer, and those people can't afford to pay them, as that would mean that they'd spent all the money they're earning by working in housing themselves. This leads to lots of them to sleep in their cars, their vans or even in waste grounds for lots of them, and also lots of them who end uo having to sleep in public shelters, full during the summer period in Ibiza.

The Florida project

On that same idea of hidden homelessness is based this film called "The Florida project", one of my favorite films. The film shows the daily life of a homeless mother and her daughter, who are staying in one of the many motels near Disneyworld in Florida, where some families who can't afford paying to stay inside the park's hotels would normally stay. The owner of the motel has gave that mother and her daughter (about 5 years old) a room in which to saty, as they're homeless and have nowhere to go. The film shows, in a really hard way, how being homeless can push you to do certain things you'd never do if you weren't in that situation, showcasing themes as drug abuses, counterfeit and prostitution. All of this happens in a motel room, meaning that she isn't counted as a homeless people in the statistics and that she's absolutely invisible to society. That idea of how hidden homelessness can reinforce even more the disconnection between society and homeless people and how those can become even more invisible seams to me really interesting and I think it could be an interesting starting point.