World's first graphic novel made by homeless people

           

Authors working on The Book of Homelessness/Courtesy of Accumulate

I love graphic novels and I love stories told by the people who are experiencing them, so this is my kind of book.

The Book of Homelessness, recently published in the UK, shares the life stories of people affected by homelessness through their own drawings, texts, poetry and photography. Their stories are personal, emotional, raw and honest. They talk about pain, abuse and dysfunction, about families, war, rejection and misplaced love, and  about overcoming difficulties and fighting and succeeding. 

By telling their own stories in the form they wanted to tell them, the authors hope to show the complexities of homelessness and what causes it – and perhaps help change perceptions around homelessness.

 The project is the brainchild of Marice Cumber, founder of youth homelessness charity Accumulate, which describes itself as “the art school of the homeless”.

The charity encourages young homeless people’s creativity through courses on fashion, photography, sculpture, graphic design and more. They also hold exhibitions and source funding to send really talented individuals to arts college. (So far, they’ve sent 20 to arts college).

Accumulate launched a crowdfunding initiative for the book two years ago, and creative workshops with the participants – who were all living in hostels, shelters or temporary accommodation – started last January.

Samantha Morton, herself previously homeless, has written an intro to the book entitled “How homelessness shaped my life”, and Colin Firth has said about it: "This is a remarkable collection in any context. The fact that these beautiful, personal works are the expressions of our neighbours who are homeless makes it untenable to ignore them ever again."

All profits from The Book of Homelessness are shared with its authors and Accumulate so it can continue to provide creative workshops for people who are homeless.

Please visit Accumulate to purchase a copy of the book (£25)

RIP Kevin Headley, who died too young - like too many homeless people

Kevin Headley graduating from the FDGU journalism training programme at Groundswell/photo: Veronique Mistiaen

This is what I find most poignant:  Kevin, wearing his ubiquitous black hat,

looks straight at the camera. In his deep, quiet voice, he says: “Life expectancy for rough sleepers is probably between 42 and 47.”

Kevin was interviewed for a video during an awareness day at the homeless charity Groundswell.  People who have experienced homelessness, NGOs and members of the public had been invited to discuss how to improve public perception of homelessness and create engagement. As always, Kevin came armed with lots of statistics and strong arguments.

A few weeks later, he was dead. 

Kevin Headley, who sold the Big Issue outside Hackney Wick station in London for many years, died in hospital on May 5 after suffering a suspected heart attack. He was only 52. 

Homeless people die on average 30 years younger than the national average, according to a study by the homeless charity Crisis. These statistics are a terrible indictment of the way our society treats homeless people - and something that Kevin campaigned and worked hard to change.

I’ve met Kevin at Groundswell in September when I began training a dozen of people who were homeless or had experienced homelessness on how to be journalists.  The six-month project, called From The Ground Up (FDGU), is a collaboration between Groundswell and the Pavement, a pocket size magazine (and website) full of useful articles and resources for homeless people. The FDGU project is funded by Comic Relief.

FDGU’s aim is to equip “peer journalists” as Groundswell calls them with the tools they need to identify and report on issues important to them – issues often overlooked by the mainstream media.

The peer journalists had decided to report on shame experienced by homeless people and the impact it has on their health, well-being and ability to improve their situation. Kevin didn’t like that theme because he strongly felt that homeless people have nothing to be ashamed of and that it is society, which should be ashamed. And of course, he was right. The peer journalists also  wanted to talk about suicide, which is much higher among homeless people than among the general population. They’ve produced amazing work, which has been published in the Pavement in Jan/Feb 2018 and Marc/April 2018 and they keep contributing to the magazine.

During our workshops, Kevin would often sit on the side, hiding behind dark glasses. At first, I thought he might be dozing off, something not unusual as some peer journalists spend their nights on the streets or in noisy hostels and night shetlers. But there was always a mischievous smile on his lips and then, when feeling inspired, he would make a contribution – not always on topic, but always full of facts and interesting ideas. He had just been given his own page in the Pavement – the problem page, “done with a light and practical touch”, as Nicola Baird, the Pavement's editor described it.

He drew beautifully and loved working with artists and curating local art events and festivals.  He also worked as “health peer advocate" with Groundswell, helping people who are homeless access appropriate healthcare.

Kevin had so much to live for. He was dearly loved by so many and was full of projects and ideas. Let’s never think of Kevin as just another dreadful statistic. Homeless people shouldn’t have to die young. Homelessness is not inevitable.

From the Ground Up: homeless journalists tell their stories

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This is street-level journalism at its best.  These journalists make you feel the terror at being thrown out on the streets by a violent landlord or what the loss of social housing in London means.  They look at issues faced by people leaving the army. They write about the exciting Museum of Homelessness and they know the best squats in the capital and how these provide a sense of community to people who have none.

They are the 'From the Ground Up' citizen journalists. They all have experienced rough sleeping, so this gives them a unique insight into homelessness, the services and policies and their impact.  Homelessness has increased sharply over the past few years.  If society is to tackle the issue effectively, politicians, social service providers, charities and the general public should learn from them.

Ten citizen journalists have enrolled in ‘From the Ground Up’, a six-month programme run by the “people-powered” homeless charity Groundswell and the Pavement magazine.  Weekly workshops on news writing, communication, interviewing etc.  help them develop the confidence and tools they need to tell their stories and the issues that are important to them.

One of the key ways they raise awareness is by publishing their stories in the Pavement, a pocket-size magazine packed with news, stories, art, cartoons and useful information for homeless readers (as well as a website).  

And so, on a cold autumn morning, I met Jimmy, Mahesh, Julz and a few other citizen journalists at the Groundswell office near Vauxhall for a day-long workshop on feature writing.  We discussed how to use brain mapping to find story ideas and how you need both facts and emotions in order to turn them into engaging features.  We practiced how to construct a story, how to write a vivid introduction and how to show rather than tell, using the readers five senses.

At the end of the programme, the group will produce a special issue for the Pavement, planned for February/March. They have chosen to focus on changes in homelessness due to economic pressures and gaps in health care provision for homeless people.

Being homeless has always been very hard, obviously, but they say that things are getting much worse. Jimmy, who found himself on the streets as a young man some 30 years ago, believes he might not have made it today…

The number of people sleeping rough in England on any one night has doubled since 2010 and increased by 30% in the last year, with an estimated 3,569 people now sleeping on the streets across England, according to new government figures.  The number of families with children in temporary accommodations has also increased significantly.  And as we see more movement between countries, migration has also become an increasingly important part of the story.

From the Ground Up citizen journalists, get your stories out there! 

Word on the Street: homeless people tell their stories

“I speak several languages”, 

“I was a heroin addict”,

“I feel reborn”,

“I was sent to prison at 17”,

“I went to university”…

I had asked the eight people sitting around the table to share a piece of interesting information about themselves – something that people walking by them on the street wouldn’t know. 

They were five men and three women – all homeless - with very diverse life experiences and backgrounds, and amazing stories to tell. Like most homeless persons I had worked with before, many had a “normal”, even promising life before something sent them off course: the death of a loved one, an accident or illness, a drug or alcohol habit, the end of a relationship, the loss of a job. 

They had come to the office of Poached Creative, a social enterprise communication agency in Hackney, London, to learn how to tell their own stories, so that they could publish them in the Pavement, a free print and online magazine packed with news, stories, cartoons and useful information for homeless readers. 

During the workshop, we discussed the power of stories, what to share and what to leave out, storytelling tools and what makes a good story. We talked about structure and style – using your own voice, painting pictures, using details and showing instead of telling.  Instead of covering their whole life, we decided to focus on one telling event that said something bigger, on people they have met, places they have been, dreams and struggles.

I used various prompts to help them think about their lives, including sharing an interesting fact about themselves. I got the idea watching a moving video featuring homeless people in Orlando, Florida, telling their “cardboard stories.”

I haven’t seen their final stories yet, but previous contributors to the Pavement wrote about their life “before” or the event that lead them to become homeless. One wrote about how miserable it is to be ill on the streets, where you cannot get warm and the police moves you all the time; others described with humour a night in a hostel or a meal in a soup kitchen.

The Storytelling workshop is part of the Pavement’s Word on the Street project aimed to help homeless people to contribute as fully as possible to the magazine.  For three months, they are given training in everything from interviewing and photojournalism to storytelling and computer skills, lead by professional journalists. The project is managed by Poached Creative, a fantastic social enterprise training and working with disadvantaged people on various creative communication projects.  

Tunnel People – Living underground in Manhattan

This week I took my journalism students to a fascinating and thought-provoking talk by award winning photojournalist and author Teun Voeten at the Frontline Club, the media club near London’s Paddington. 

Dutch photographer and cultural anthropologist, Voeten has covered conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sudan, Angola, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Afghanistan, Colombia, Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza for Vanity Fair, Newsweek, The New Yorker, and National Geographic, among others, as well as for organizations such as the International Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, Human Rights Watch and the United Nations.

In the mid-nineties however, he took a break from war reporting. For five months he lived, slept and worked in a tunnel underneath Manhattan's posh Upper West Side. He lived alongside an eclectic mix of outsiders: Vietnam veterans, hippies, crack addicts, Cuban refugees, convicted killers, computer programmers, philosophical recluses and criminal runaways.


His book on this community, Tunnel People, published in the Netherlands in 1996, describes their daily work, problems and pleasures with humor and compassion. It also tries to reconstruct people’s past and describe how they became homeless.


The tunnel people were evicted in 1996, but Amtrak and homeless organizations offered them alternative housing. Some succeeded in starting again above ground, while others failed. In his 2010 updated version of Tunnel People, Voeten tracks down the original tunnel dwellers and describes what has happened in the thirteen years since they left the tunnels. 


The book is written both as a journalist and anthropologist with the insight of someone who has actually lived there among the rats, collected cans and firewood and scavenged for food. It is an honest, direct and unsentimental account of the mean, grimy misery underground. Yet, in many ways, the tunnel people were doing better than the homeless people above ground. As Voeten points out, they have created their own environment, showing a level of self-confidence and planning beyond the day-to-day that is rare among street people. In fact many don’t even consider themselves homeless.


The book makes you think of the thousands of homeless above ground – in full view, yet still invisible. Since the first version of Tunnel People, there has been a huge increase in the number of the homeless, especially families, as the economic crisis has caused lay-offs and foreclosures on a scale not seen since the Great Depression.  It is not only the poor who have been pushed over the edge – and still are – but also the middle classes. Voeten hopes his book will shed some light on the complex problem of homelessness.