Home(lessness): Southwark Citizens' for Spatial Justice

Home(lessness): Southwark Citizens' for Spatial Justice consists of 5 workshops that took place at the South London Gallery Fire Station, as part of the first stage of a three part project addressing the urgent state of homelessness in Southwark and as an investigation into methodologies for creating change and culminates in a public exhibition also at the South London Gallery's Fire Station.

This first stage uses sortition - a process of random selection employed by the Ancient Greeks to select political decision makers - by sending out 1,000 letters to local people by randomising post codes. A representative group from the responses were then invited to attend 5 briefing workshops at the South London Gallery Fire Station by experts in the field on key issues such as access to healthcare, affordable housing, immigration status and accessing support. Briefings were delivered by Amy Clements from the Southwark Law Centre, Guddy Helevuo-Barnet founding member of the Domestic Abuse Housing Alliance, Anthony Luvera and Gerald McLaverty of Frequently Asked Questions, Dr. Caroline Shulman and Nurse Practitioner Kendra Schneller from the Guys and St. Thomas Health Inclusion Team, Jerry Flynn from the 35% Campaign, and an anonymous worker from a London Council.

The Citizens' Action Group (not without continuing debate over the focus of our activities) decided to take the issue of housing to a Parliament meeting with Neil Coyle MP from the All Party Parliamentary Group for Ending Homelessness. There we presented our work and some of our lived experience of homelessness. Some of our connections from the SLG briefings joined the Action Group along with new participants who presented alternative ideas for housing as well as Joe Barson reporting about the current situation for Homeless charities in Manchester. Other participants were Rebecca Vagi from DAHA's Whole Housing project, Assistant Professorial Research Fellow at LSE Kath Scanlon and Directors of Ethical Lettings Georgina Summerfield and Mike Rangecroft.

There was a strong sense in the Citizens' Action Group that we want to investigate visual campaign tools. The CAG will reconvene and potentially reconfigure in order to think which issue they would like to continue to take forward for further research and then a future campaign in 2020.

The project is being carried out in collaboration with curator Amy McDonnell. With thanks to Prof. Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos and support from the Westminster Law and Theory Lab and the Sortition Foundation. Design by Europa.

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