Go! Find Inspiration on the street

“Go! Find inspiration on the street.” is a little artefact that aim to build bridges between public and homeless problem, it is also an artefect that motivate homeless people to create, to inspire, to find out their value. It’s formula is Education X Inspiration X Originals / Inequality.

The “Education” bit means the education about homeless problem. After working in Charity for 4 months, I noticed that although many of us work so close to the homeless people, we only have a very limited angles to the problem. Many of us are not clear about why homelessness should happen? What are the mechanisms behind this problem? Currently the charity reach a dilema: we, the amateur chef team, had to spend long hours(around 9 hours) try to preparing food for homeless people every day, which is a very labourous task. Since we are not professional and not being paid, inevitaby we meet stock control problem, hyginene problem, morale problem sometime during the day which brings huge panic and frustrations. The direct impact of these issues is the decreasing volunteer attendency, since generally people do not want to work in a stressful and uncertain environment for nothing. The charity is seeking transition. Also, after reading around this topic for 2 semesters, I am confident to distill some of the key elements of this problems in to two sheets—-The mechanisms of homelessness. I try to make the artcle as succinct as possible to allow people can easily got the points. I also put reference lists at the end to help people to learn more about them.

The “Inspiration” and “originals” are about motivation and action. The pattern appearance of the cup are inspired by the town, including tube stations and provocative street view. I drew them with color marker. They are from my observation and recreation. The idea behind this is that I want to make them realise that the resources are around us: the city. There are so many interesting areas in this town are waiting to be explored. Why not we move on and use our angle to depict our sense of London? That is why I put a two-side pencil and a short sticky note, since very few people will give homeless people a tool to express themselves. I hope this is a good start.

And, Inequality. Homeless problem is deteriorating because of inequality is rife. This keep remind me that the presentation of my artefact need to be as democratic as possible—a form that is accepted by most people. The “coffee cup” concept intervention is what I had developed in the early April—-which use coffee cup as a hook to allow homeless people to talk about their story by presenting the relationship between coffee and comfort zone. Coffee is one of the most democratic culture norm in western society, and it is important part of homeless people’s life(they all keep coffee cups with them for different usage). People’s respose to my coffee cup idea is very positive, most of them are so suprise to find that this way of communication. Therefore, I keep using this idea for developing the artefact.

I tested this idea via making a mini exhibition in the charity, here are some key feedback I had received:

“Very unique, Very inspiring, ….the picture of tree, that is my favourite. I actually keep one of these cup in my suit case.”

—Andrew, the owner of charity

“Felix, I saw your work. It is a fantastic piece of work, but I struggle to read the material…..”

—Martin, volunteer

“This is a very good idea Felix….We can put something else in the cup, like candies! And we can use this idea for distribution during chrismas!”

—Chow, volunteer(amateur painter)