Development of Question

1rd. How can the guidance for homeless charities of different fields be refined to help homeless people in Islington reconnect to the communities?

2rd. How can the concept of cigarette be used to help homeless people in Islington raise awareness of sense of community?

3rd. How can dialogue event be used to help homeless people in islington raise awareness of sense of the community?

4th. How can design be used to facilitate positive emotional connection between homeless people in Islington and society?

5th. How can design be used to facilitate constructive and meaningful dialogue between homeless people in Islington and society?

6th How can design be used to facilitate constructive and meaningful dialogue of homelessness problem?

The center part of my practice is to discover how can we help homeless people get out of the current situation, and how can I make a change to this situation? This guide my practice and helps me to form my question in a circular basis. At starting point, from my research, I found that there are a number of homeless charity in this city(More than 23), and they are the important functionaries that homeless people can seek help, so I wonder how can I better communicate the functions and importance of these charities to homeless people, and guide them to seek help.

Therefore I make the very first the 1st questions to guide my actual practise to make queries to homeless people. However, in the reality, I had met many drawbacks, for example, I am not familiar with homeless people including their life style and languages, so that I am not able to communicate with them effectively; and more importantly, homeless people are usually in extremely “stressed”—–which equivalent to undernourishment, extreme poverty, negative hygiene, stigmatisation, empathetic barriers and depression problems. I start to realise homelessness is a complex of social problems from different aspect. Therefore, I decide to understand them, to live with them, to know what they like to do.

This motivate me to develop the 2rd and the 3rd questions.In the 2rd question, I use cigarette and a “hook” since cigarette is a indispensable part of every homeless people’s life. It has value of sharing, equal, and communication. Base on the question, I hold several dialogue events and interventions with homeless people, in order to allow them to actively share their stories, their difficulties. From these practice, I had learnt a lot about their life and how they are in this position. I found that the reality had made their mind and senses harden and cold—-for example, their loose pace, shaky voice, their dirty and wooden faces, and their cynical eyes. The “gap” start to surface in my mind, that is better mutual understanding, or the better understanding of the reality we are live in. And better mutual understanding can generate from constructive dialogues.

So what is the positive dialogue like? How can I create this positive dialogue? What action is required? These queries lead me to develop the 4th and then the 5th questions. Due to the progress of my research in June to August, my tutor Zuleika suggested me to be more rigorous and specific with the question, and also, avoid any possibilities of miss-interpretation. I think this is an constructive advice. Therefore, I change my questions in to” How can design be used to facilitate constructive and meaningful dialogue about homeless problem in Islington?”. From “between homeless people and society” to “homelessness” problems can help to address the complexity, the width of the problem, and meanwhile avoid conflicts and moral issue.