As homeless people have moved from the streets to hotels, arts projects have been engaging with new participants who had not engaged with them before. Matt Peacock highlights some lessons we can learn from the Covid crisis.
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Arts & homelessness: how creativity & activism are addressing isolation (Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation)
Across history, artists have always been on the front line of activism – activism around issues of conflict, climate change, poverty and injustice. There is a passion that drives many artists of all genres to stand up to be counted and not accept the status quo. They mobilise and find ways to express an issue in a different, artistic way which often produces more impact than discourse alone. Who could forget the plastic bottle boat outside the UK parliament, the pink seesaw installation between the border of USA and Mexico or the work of artist and HIV campaigner Keith Haring in the 1980s. A diamond, they say, is made ‘under pressure’ and many diamonds have been formed in society by artists when we have faced our darkest moments.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been no different in that artists (despite many losing work and jobs) have joined the front-line once more. In homelessness, the positives of 5,500 people sleeping rough being housed in empty hotels in the UK has been countered by significant isolation since many people in this group were shielding because of underlying health issues. And the majority of this group is isolated further by not having Smart phones and laptops so are digitally excluded and unable to access the wealth of on-line content that suddenly exploded onto the airwaves... Keep reading on Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation