91¸£Àû

‘Understanding Homelessness: a creative toolkit’ is a project funded by the 91¸£Àû’s Arts and Humanities Impact Fund, that brings together Professor Nadine Holdsworth with two organisations working on the frontline of homelessness support services: the Don Calabria Institute, which works with those experiencing homelessness across Italyand La Mie de Pain, the largest charity working with those affected by homelessness and precarious housing in Paris.

The aim of the project is to animate the topic of homelessness in ways that challenge stigmatising representations of those experiencing homelessness, enhance knowledge, and expand creative learning methods. The collaborations with homeless charities have resulted in the generation of accessible, informative, and beautifully designed educational resources that these organisations are using to animate their educational outreach work in schools and colleges, as well as their training of volunteers and staff.

The resulting toolkits include research into the different national contexts of homelessness to facilitate in-depth exploration of the diverse and intersectional personal and structural factors that can lead to homelessness, including domestic abuse; mental health issues; addiction; leaving the care system, military, or criminal justice system; the ‘gig’ economy and gentrification. They incorporate analysis of social and cultural responses to and representations of homelessness, including ‘hostile architecture’, as well as individual films, novels, plays and songs to explore questions around agency, representation, and stigma. Running alongside information, the toolkits focus on creative pedagogies by offering a range of discussion-based, written, visual and drama-based exercises to facilitate embodied learning. The voices of those affected by homelessness are present through the inclusion of first-person testimonials from service users of the Don Calabria Institute and La Mie de Pain. These provide compelling new insights into the multiple causes of homelessness and how it is experienced by those affected.