Project Outline

An overview of the project

Homelessness issue in London is critical. 1 in every 52 people in London is homeless(London.gov.com, 2021). Trust for london(2020) stated that the population of rough sleeper from London is in the tendency of growth in the last decade. Crisis(2019) suggested that cost of homeless estimated at £34518. And Gov.uk suggested that cost of homelessness equates to £24,000 – £30,000 per person, not far off from the average annual income. These figures deeply intrigued me that inspired me to research the homelessness problem in actual practice. Why homelessness take place? What had done to reduce it? How can be done to help them return back to normal patterns of life?

After primary/secondary research of homelessness people in Islington From March to May, I had several findings. Firstly, most homeless people live in isolation, and have little positive connection to society. They hope to be cared. Secondly, generally, most citizens sympathise homelessness, and keen to give them different support. However, there are little creative artefact, or events that can unite homelessness and other citizens to participate in meaningful activities about the community.

The observation I have identified

From June to August, I start to work for homelessness charity. During my work in Charity, I had contruct positive relationship with my colleagues and had inquire more than twenty of my colleagues about the homelessness issue, including why homelessness is happened, what we can do to resolve the issue. In general, my colleagues are urban professionals. For example, they are working in tourist, education, civil servant, civil engineer, retailing, website design, journalist. They represents the urban middle class who are keen at social welfare practices. I discover that most of them are lack of systematic or holistic understanding about the problem, for example, the mechanisms behind the problem. Even though they have close relationship with homeless charity and the issue, most of them can generally see limited angles. However, from my research, homelessness has high complexity which involve negociation of different factors of the contemporary society, politics, economics behavior, law, and human identity in modern society. And also, there are circular relationship between causes and effects within these factors. I discover that this is a gap, that people needs education about the causations behind homeless problem so that we know actually we are part of this problem, and so we need to have collaborative mindset to solve this problem. This gives me a new direction, that is how can I applied my knowledge in a creative way to allow people to understand the problems in more angles in order to foster constructive dialogues?

Research Methodology

Research Application: Action research

To define, action research is a type of applied research that is set on providing practical solutions to specific problems by pointing the in the right directions(Creswell, 2002). It allow me to constantly question myself the direction and improvement of my work during actual practices and helps me to develop my research questions.

Research Objective: Experimental Research

To define, experimental research is an “objective, systematic, controlled investigation” for the purpose of controlling phenomena and examining the causuality among selected variables(Creswell, 2002). During experimental research, I am able to introduce catalyst and monitor its effect. It allows me to assess cause-and-effect relationships in a practical way.

Data collection: qualitative research

Due to nature of study, I applied qualitative research for data collection. Since I do not have a complete list of the population of my major stakeholders, and I cannot select my sample from this population at random. So I focus on the sample which is representative relative to the whole population I am research on.

In primary research, I had used semi-structure interviews; event-based and artefact-based intervention

methods to gather information around my topics. For semi-structure interview(Appendix 1), I had conduct interviews on 20 homeless people in Islington, I collecting their data via recording(Appendix 2), photos, and note taking, which partly shown on my learning log. For event-based and artefact-based intervention, I collected responses and feedback through pictures of reactions(in blog) and online questionaire(Appendix 3). In the secondary research, I gather existing data from reputable books, research journals, interviews extracts from topics including sociology, politics, economics, design thinking, community design.

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 in Islington?