Amplification Hackney Homelessness Minhao Zhang Yichao Zhang Jingyi Chen
Amplification: Hackney Homeless
Homelessness is rising
New Legislation has arrived
In the past few decades, Hackney has become an increasingly attractive place to live, this has had a significant impact on both the mortgage and rental market in the borough; Average house prices have increased by over 63% over the course of the last 5 years, which has had a corresponding impact on the local rental market, where rents have increased by between 32% and 75%. Over the same period, the number of rough sleepers has more than doubled, moreover there are groups whose number are impossible to be counted: the 'hidden homeless’, so called ‘sofa sleeper’, who are also struggling for somewhere to settle.
In 2018, the Homelessness Reduction Act comes into force, requiring local authorities to actively take steps to prevent households at risk of homelessness tipping into crisis. However, since 2010 local authority funds have reduced by around 40% with further cuts continuing until 2020. Councils are now being asked to do more with less. This requires new, efficient, and innovative approaches to tackling a worsening problem.
Pictures of interviews carried on in the streets of Hackney, photographer: Jia Chen, Feb 22nd 2018
Pictures of living condition of homeless in the streets of Hackney, photographer: Jia Chen, Feb 22nd 2018
Pictures of interviews carried on in the streets of Hackney, photographer: Jia Chen, Feb 22nd 2018
Sources of Informations in research stage
Diagrams by Alastair Fuad-Luke, March 2017. See also, Metahaven. 2014. Black Transparency. The Right to Know in the Age of Mass Surveillance. Steinburg Press.
Research Tools
Filming
Interviews
Story Cubes
LEGO Sketches
Filmings
Those who are left behind We use filming as a tool for research as it can be great evidence and narrative for the subject we are dealing with, by filming the physical environment and also people’s conversation about the topic, we are able to gather many informations that cannot be found not he internet, which directs us to the next stage of our design. In our film, we have few conversations of Hackney residents talking about the changes in the past 5-10 years, one thing most of them mentioned is people who got left behind in the social changes which caught our attentions, thus we decided to do further investigation into this issue.
Interviews
Interviews on Hackney streets After we determined the issue we are going to deal with, we soon started our further research about the subject ——Homelessness. To gain a better connections with homeless group, we arranged at least 10 interviews with homeless and let them talk about they life stories. From these precious experience, we are able to see things from a different view, for example, we got to know that the St John’s church is the community central for certain homeless group; How to hide your belongings where you travel to somewhere else; How address issue influence their life..etc. These informations really inspired us especially later in our actual designing stage. There are few things we learnt from our siders in this subject, that is, the views public are holding against homeless can really make a difference. Our ambition in the following outcomes are mainly offering option(s) both for public and homeless themselves.
Story Cubes
Research Tool sample Through our interviews we got to build closer connections with people on the streets of Hackney, thus we came up with the idea of finding a way to have a better look at the narratives of their daily life from their own perspectives of view. What we did was sending disposable cameras to several people we’ve known and asked them if could frame whatever they want, we made appointments with them that we will collect the camera later. The outcome is surprisingly good, most of them showed up and brought us their works. Based on the films we collected, we built our ‘Story Cube’ which later helped us in marking locations that homeless group used to gather and exposing relationships between individuals inside the group.
Story Cube
LEGO Sketches
Steve Before his life on street for three and half years, Steve used to take care of his parents for 15 years, doing everything for them avoids Steve from any social connection including employment. 3 years ago dad passed away, Steve was driven out of the council house and ended up homeless.
Mill Mill has a son who’s currently living with his grandma, she was driven out of her flat since she couldn’t afford no more. Two years ago someone dumped an old dog in front of Mill, she couldn't leave this dog there and has since then keep the dog with her.
Den Den used to have a family wife, kids and work, somehow his wife went with his best friend and Den ended up on the street. Den is on top of the waiting list of a local shelter where he’s been waiting for 3 years to get there, his biggest ambition for now is to register an address at local charity place.
Design Outcomes
1
Currency System
2
LEGO Monopoly
3
Phone Booth
1
Currency System
1
Currency System
Another option of donating… The idea of Currency System is basically offering an option for individuals who wants to donate but want to make sure their money won’t be spent on feeding addictive habits. There’s a project in Amsterdam going on at the moment about giving registered homeless a jacket that allows people to donate by touching credit card, most importantly the money they donate will be transferred into a bank account managed by local homeless shelter. Our currency system might use the similar tech in the donating system, our ambition is not only about building trust in donating process but also in a way encourage those people for long term on street to get rid of addictions and return to society. Picture from the news ‘This Jacket Designed For Homeless People Takes Wireless Donations Electronically’ https://www.fastcompany.com/3067191/this-jacket-designed-for-homelesspeople-takes-wireless-donations-electronically
1
Currency System
How this system works As shown in the chart, charity organization work with local shops so that people can make choice whether to get their changes in cash or in Credit Coins(something like Voucher). As long as people decided to donate by Voucher/ CreditCard, those who took this donation will only able to use the credit in the partner shops with restrains or pay for accommodation and other services in the Charity Organization. Furthermore, once they saved enough credit and decided to return to society, organization will help them to cash out and spend on future uses with supervision.
2
LEGO Monopoly
2
LEGO Monopoly-Characters
We want to add Homeless characters into LEGO session…. During our observation about residents in Hackney and their relationships with homeless people, we noticed the reactions local children have towards homeless. It came to us that children themselves are the best mirror reflecting the point of view public are holding against homeless group. LEGO as an education to kids is a highly social-aware brand, we’ve seen it publishes new characters that directly links to social issues every year, the even made characters of prisoners in they city session. But unfortunately homeless are not included, thus we can’t help thinking of what if we create lego figures of homeless and use it as a communication tool to show a bigger picture of what our society really looks like?
2
LEGO Monopoly-the Game
About Monopoly…. Monopoly is hugely recognisable and treasured in the UK. The original game’s goal is to monopolise the entire property of London. The goal of our game is to simply find a place to live with the help of ‘Ladder’, our conceptual charity. So there is also an under-pining satirical element to the solution that aides amplification.
2
LEGO Monopoly
Design tools we use We explored around few different softwares to achieve the best visualization of the game as possible.
Locations the game based on The game we created is based on locations in Hackney that exists in real life which local residents are very familiar with.
Currency System We include the Phone Booth project and Currency system into our game sections as positive factors in this game since it is not only a narrative of homeless life but also introduction of our Designs.
2
LEGO Monopoly
Game Structure The game works similar to normal Monopoly only the sections are based on narratives of homeless life. Every round represents a day and every day players will face a new situation decided by the location they are in. This game is our ambition of letting audience participate in the experience of ‘Being Homeless’. By playing this game, audience could get a better understanding of what homeless people are going through on daily basis including negative and positive aspects that could possibly influence their life. The experience of playing this game will hopefully lead people into further discussion about homelessness.
2
LEGO Monopoly-Characters
Player-Characters in the Game We build different characters for player with different life story which will effect their choices and experience in the game, the story we made for each characters are based on interviews that links to real person with their permission for sure. Also we made ID card for each character to emphasize the importance of having an ID and explain how it would influence one’s life on streets.
2
LEGO Monopoly
Social Participation in the Game Not only for homeless, we also include different social characters into the game based on their connections with homeless group, some are doctors in local medical central, some are police men, some are just Hackney residents. By doing this, we are able to show a bigger picture of the community and explain how they are associating with each other on daily basis. Later in our testify stage, we brought this game back to Hackney, some of the residents are surprisingly happy to find their identity being shown in the game.
2
LEGO Monopoly
Chance Cards In every version of Monopoly game there are chance cards that might bring players Good or Bad luck, in this game we design multiply situations for our characters based on the narrative of homeless life. By picking chance cards players got to understand what they might have to deal with if they were living on the street.
2
LEGO Monopoly
Branding The package of LEGO Monopoly
2
LEGO Monopoly-Feedbacks
“ I think it’s a good idea because a lot of people automatically dismiss and reject the homeless; they don’t really understand the hardship they go through. ”
“ It helps me to understand that in life there’s a lot of different tough moments for a homeless person. They are just human beings like us, but comparatively have a lot rougher time. ”
“ The game helps you achieve a higher level of understanding of inside the community, helping you to have a better, sympathetic view of everyone. ”
“ The limitation here Is not the subject, but the game itself. If someone was not interested in Monopoly, then they are never going to start the process of learning and taking in the information. ”
3
Phone Booth
3
Phone Booth
Hackney Homeless Levels of homelessness in the UK are increasing year on year. London dominates the top 50 places for homelessness, with Hackney specifically sitting in the top 10 London boroughs for homelessness. Whilst there are numerous causes behind this, one is undoubtedly decades of failure to build affordable homes in the capital. We want to amplify this issue, whilst also offering a constructive design-based solution to help turn the tide of the increasing numbers of homelessness. Photo of ‘I used to be your neighbor’ by Anonymous
3
Phone Booth
Basic Needs ion Homeless Through our research in London borough of Hackney, we found out two extraordinary aspects about this area: Marginalization—the expansion that happened in Hackney in the past 10 years changed local people’s life in many ways, some of them got left behind in this large range of social changes and are facing the feelings of social exclusion. Another is Fragmentation, we all agree that certain groups are more powerful in ‘Free Speech’ that can possibly push social changes than other groups, and in this case, homeless group are in especially not good looking position of speaking for themselves. What we want to do this project is to amplify their voices in a way that their basic needs can be truly understood and shared in social discussions.
3
Phone Booth
Phone Booth=Community The red British telephone booth is a universally recognized icon for over 90 years, but thanks to the smartphones, these British classics are becoming obsolete. Somehow we believe that we are able to re-purpose them as a mini information center to continue serving the local community. Through our research about Homelessness in Hackney we found out that except address issue being a barrier for homeless people to get back to society, not being able to get valid informations especially online informations is also a problem for people in trouble settling down.
Proposal We want to amplify this issue, whilst also offering a constructive design-based solution to help turn the tide of the increasing numbers of homelessness. In aiming to achieve this, we propose: Re-design of city phone booths to give the homeless an address and information hub.
3
Phone Booth
Mappings We mapped out all the homeless-concerned charity locations around Hackney as they are the best place to testify this project.
3
Phone Booth
Structure of informations we offer in the system based on local charity organizations.
3
Phone Booth-Process
3
Phone Booth
3
Phone Booth
Duration The Ladder Organization is the entity of the duration of the Phone booth program and Mailbox system, supervised by the local council, the Ladder works both for registered homeless and also short term homeless people who are struggling to get a way out. Considering the current situation and the Housing Act 1996, registered homeless have priority of receiving helps from the Ladder, for those who are not yet register in local government, our organization will arrange a waiting list for whoever applied.
Sponsorship Sponsored by local charity organizations, the Ladder can also gain benefits from the outdoor advertisings on the phone booth. The fundings will be spent under the supervision of public and local government.
find more in our website: https://lesliechen67.wixsite.com/thisiskris
Thank You ;)
Theo
Leslie
Jack