Pop-up exhibition at the People's History Museum

Next Tuesday the 16th May, The Homeless Library is visiting The People's History Museum for a 'pop-up' exhibition, between 11am and 4pm. 

The People's History Museum is the national centre for the collection, conservation, interpretation and study of material relating to the history of working people in Britain.

Artists Jeni McConnell and Lois Blackburn, will be joined by some of the Homeless Librarian's from the Booth Centre, to share the artist books and poems, and to invite visitors to the Museum to have a go at making their own handmade book.

The Homeless Library is the first history of British homelessness, told through poems, interviews, artworks and handmade books. Supported by The Heritage Lottery Fund.

To download our free ebook, please visit http://www.blurb.co.uk
For more information about the project please visit Our website

The Homeless Library: a homecoming

The Booth Centre and arthur+martha would like to invite you to the opening celebration of three projects, The Homeless Library, Sing me to Sleep and Mosaics made at The Booth.

Join us on the 8th May at 1pm at The Booth Centre Manchester, for a sharing of the artwork, refreshments, and readings. All are welcome.

'A Perfect Vacuum'. From the Homeless Library Collection

The project The Homeless Library is nearly at its official finish point, but in truth this feels like the beginning, not the end.

There are so many stories that Phil and I didn't capture, so many strands of the history of homelessness that we only touched on. And like any history, it's happening right now; since completing the interviews and poems for the project, new people have become homeless for new reasons, we have seen people find accommodation, take steps forward in their personal battles with alcohol, substance abuse, mental health issues, relationships, tragically we have also seen others not make it.

The Homeless Library has fed directly into our new project Armour, sharing the stories of the homeless people who've served in the armed forces. Threads from it are teased out in Phil's Berlin-based project Heaven-Proof House, which asks refugees about the nature of home.

The Library has had a profound effect on us personally. In many ways it has been the hardest project we've ever done, because it was so emotionally intense and because we had so much to learn. The situation of some people we met was heartbreaking. But hope was also present in each day, each session - and humour and imagination, even delight. We were on a steep learning curve too: this was the first time we had attempted a formal "history". In fact, our Library is the first-ever history of British homelessness thats ever been attempted. The voices of homeless people are finally being heard and accepted, as a valuable, fascinating part of all our stories. 

'Hamlet' from The Homeless Library collection.

We have also been approached by other organisations, to share our experience. The Museum of Homelessness have liaised with us and are doing excellent work. Recently, Lois met Karl Hyde from Underworld whose Street Poem project for MIF will soon start. A few days ago we were asked if another organisation could pick up our idea and start a Homeless Library in London...

The Homeless Library will continue to grow and develop, sending its message to the world. We would like to thank the many, generous-hearted Homeless Librarians who contributed and who led the way.

My name is hello thank you and goodbye 

My name is many, legion

Woke up this morning not in my own bed

Half a bed it was I fell out of

Fell out across fields, over and out

Over and out to continue

Made my way here, my name is many

My name is hello thank you and goodbye.

Anon

To download your free ebook from The Homeless Library visit blurb.
For more information and links to films and artwork please visit /the-homeless-library/
And for more interviews and project diaries look on this site at arthur-and-martha.blogspot

A wee light at the end of the tunnel

Danny Collins

'So many of the books have so much to say, doom and gloom and a wee light at the end of the tunnel- there is a light at the end of the tunnel- but it's a long bloody tunnel.' Lawrence McGill

Howard Installing books for The Homeless Library

Yesterday saw the exhibition install of two arthur+martha projects at Bury Art Museum, The Homeless Library and Sing me to Sleep, a British-Lithuanian art project.

The Homeless Library, is a fraction of a heritage: the unwritten, unheard stories of homeless people. The exhibition in Bury shares 50 plus books, full of artworks, poems and interviews.

Riff Raff

Lawrence identified one of the problems with showing artist books behind glass: 'you only get one page of the book, it's like only getting one page of Alice in Wonderland, you're not getting the full story- that's why I flattened that one out (Riff Raff, shown above) so you could read the whole thing.

Another member of the group pointed out: you might only get one page of each story, but it all comes together with snippets of other peoples stories...

Lawrence, Egle and Howard installing The Homeless Library

For the install of The Homeless Library, I was joined by Gary, Howard, Masoud, Lawrence and Paul from The Booth Centre, (a day center for people who are or who have experienced homelessness) Over the last few years, Phil and I have learnt so much from The Booth Centre and friend to arthur+martha
clinical psychologist Polly Kaiser, about the importance of participants being involved at ever stage of a project, of finding ways of this not being a token gesture, but a opportunity to truly learn from each other.

Leaping from the success of the Homeless Library presentation at The University of Glasgow,  I stood back and handed over the curating to the rest of the group. 

As soon as the cases were open, they got on with the task- made all the decisions as to what was going where, read the books carefully and decided what pages were to be left open, and all done in such an amazing co-operative sensitive way- no bickering, no ego, but respect for each other and the work, the results are wonderful, the group added a great richness and freshness to the exhibition.

Masoud, Paul and Howard installing The Homeless Library

Sing me to Sleep / Padainuok man labanakt is a British-Lithuanian project. People who are currently homeless or who have experienced homelessness, worked with artists from arthur+martha and Lithuanian Socialiniai meno projektai.  The projects explored the tangled forests of fairytale, childhood and their current life.

Sing me to Sleep, Lithuanian film.

Preparation of space at Bury Art Museum

Hanging of Sing me to Sleep

Sing me to Sleep, quilt and Lithuanian installation in foreground

We are delighted that Egle Gudonyte,  the lead artist in Lithuania brought to England a beautiful and thought provoking intervention to the gallery. The installation is just a fragment of the overall collaboration in “Sing me to Sleep”. In its modest scale, it connects the nature and human acts that can be found in both life, and fairy-tales: walking, confronting hunger, finding a shelter and the pursuit of happiness. 

Materials and instructions to build a house. Part of the Lithuanian installation

 
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Materials and instructions to build a house. / Priemonės ir instrukcija, kaip pastatyti namą.

Instruction, thread, 4 match boxes, wooden plate, plastic bag. The instructions were written down by the project participant Rimga.  This house has never been built.

LOVESHIP: The Homeless Library at the Festival of Love

FRIENDSHIP BECOMES / HEARTSHIP BECOMES / 

COMPANIONSHIP BECOMES / LOVESHIP by Peter Twigg

The Homeless Library at the Southbank, 2016

The Homeless Library had its public launch on 11 July, at the Poetry Library, Southbank in London. I have rarely been at an art event where so much goodwill shone on so many faces. The exhibition is part of the Southbank Festival of Love and it felt to me that our launch lived up to the name. 

Five participants in the project came to send their books, poems, interviews and artworks out into the world. And an audience of 70 well-wishers arrived for the event, which included a public workshop to demonstrate how the books and poems were made.

Jack Quashie reading at the Southbank

We gave a short tour around the exhibition in which different participants spoke about their work, the making and the meaning of it. There were some tears and a lot of banter too. There were also some heartrending moments. Jack Quashie read a short interview extract about walking for ten days across desert as a refugee and the crowded room went silent:

"When you are walking on sand, you cannot lie down and go to sleep. Even if you are tired, you cannot sleep. The sand moves like waves on water, if you lie down and sleep it will bury you. When people died we did not dig graves for them, we left them on the sand and it covered them. Sometimes the skeletons come back up again. And then they sink under the sand once more. I try not to think about it."

We ended our tour with a reading of the poem above, by Peter Twigg. It is a sweet little piece about human connection and Peter read it with such warmth that I think he charmed every listener.

Peter Twigg and Christine Hough mid-workshop

Phil Barraclough (in orange coat) explains his work, to Lorraine Mariner far right and others

We then ran a workshop for an hour or so in which our participants shared their skills, encouraging the audience to become makers. It was a big pleasure to be with such a mixed group of all ages and all backgrounds and make work together, peacefully. To sit around a table together while making poems, writing, art, is an activity that has been part of my entire life. When I was a child my mother would sit myself and brothers and my sister around the kitchen table with paint, paper and bits of cardboard to keep us amused and to keep an eye on us. While we sat around that table the arguments would stop, the worries would stop, and a kind of busy calm would descend on us.

The same magic occurred again at the Southbank on that July afternoon. Maybe it was because our band of bookmakers have now become so confident that they happily encourage others. Or because the Library staff and the audience were open-hearted and keen to join with us. Or maybe it was because both my mum, Shirley, and Lois' mum, Pat, had come to the launch and were lending extra support. For a short time, I felt I'd come full circle and had arrived home.

Poem on pillar by Paddy; booklets on bookcase various participants

On behalf of all the Homeless Library team, we would like to thank the staff at The Saison Poetry Library, Southbank for their extraordinary kindness and support. We would particularly like to acknowledge the help of Chris McCabe, Lorraine Mariner and Pascal O'Laughlin for their skill and enthusiasm. It means a great deal.

The Homeless Library is on exhibition at The Poetry Library, Southbank until 18 September 2016. This project is supported by The Heritage Lottery Fund.

Photographs by Julia Grime, 2016

Book by audience member made as a 'reply' to the exhibition during the workshop

The Homeless Library: a catalogue of homeless lives

The Homeless Library will launch at The Southbank, London with an open poetry and book-making workshop.

Homeless people have created a first-person history of British homelessness, exhibiting at The Poetry Library, Southbank 9 July-18 September. It includes individual testimonies, poetry and art written in handmade books, lending insight into experiences of Britain's homeless. Meet the makers and create a handmade book with them, at The Poetry Library on 9 July, 4pm.

A free 200 page ebook, The Homeless Library, including interviews, poems and artworks has been created as a catalogue for the exhibition and can be downloaded here.

Launch date: Saturday 9 July

Time: 4-7pm

Price: Free

Venue: The Poetry Library, Level 5, Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre

"We tell you stuff because we think we can trust you. Trust is the biggest thing of all, it is the biggest thing I own."

The Homeless Library is lived history, people's descriptions of their own lives, as told by contemporary homeless people. Alongside the interviews, poems and artworks inscribed into handmade books tell an emotional history.

In Britain, the heritage of homelessness is brutally sparse. This is the first shared history of British homelessness. Interviews have been edited and footnoted, by various ‘experts’ including homeless people themselves, who have the greatest expertise. There are also accounts by older people who witnessed homelessness from the 1930s onwards.

These experiences lent to The Homeless Library connect every one of us, after all we share a society. And the tellers have much to offer, because they see as an artist or a philosopher sees. From within and yet outside.

This ebook was launched as part of The Homeless Library exhibition at the Poetry Library, Southbank, London, 9 July-18 September 2016. Project devised and run by arts organisation arthur+martha 2014-16. Supported by The Heritage Lottery.

UNIQUE HOMELESS LIBRARY EXHIBITION TO OPEN IN PARLIAMENT

Homeless people in Greater Manchester and Stockport have handmade the first history of British homelessness, which will debut at the Houses of Parliament next week.

Ann Coffey, MP for Stockport, and chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Runaway and Missing Children and Adults, will open the exhibition in the Upper Waiting Hall of the House of Commons at 3pm on May 24, 2016. The exhibition will be on display in Parliament for the rest of the week and then go on to public exhibition at the Southbank Festival of Love, 9 July-18 September and will tour venues in NW England. 

The Homeless Library has been made by local homeless people and opens up previously untold stories of the lives of homeless people through interviews, artworks, poems and handmade books. This unique and unprecedented history of British homelessness has been devised by arts organisation arthur+martha, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Ms Coffey said: 

"This project is both a piece of history and an art piece. I don't think I've ever come across anything like it before. It's beautiful. These are fascinating stories that need to be heard. Being heard is something that everybody needs, it makes us a society. Maybe these books are something we can all learn from - and maybe we can help the storytellers." 

Many homeless people live and die as ‘invisibles’. When they die their very existence sometimes leaves no mark. This project opens up an untold chronicle, that exists off the pages of official history books.

Instead, it is a history based on conversations: people's descriptions of their own lives, as told by contemporary homeless people and also older people who witnessed homelessness from the 1930s onwards. Along with interviews, there are artworks and poems. Many people involved found that these discussions and making the artworks and poems were a transformative experience.

Each book in the Library is handmade - often recycling secondhand books, which were customised and handwritten. Recycled secondhand books make the point that homeless history has been crowded out by other voices.

The Homeless Library is supported by The Heritage Lottery Fund and partnered with The Booth Centre, The Wellspring, and Bury Art Museum. Alongside photos of the handwritten books, you can read the interviews at The Homeless Library page on Facebook and blogspot

Loneliness + Isolation vs. Cosiness + Warmth

Today while working on 'The Homeless Library' at the Booth Centre, Manchester I met Phil. Phil is currently homeless, in and out of night shelters, waiting since last Spring to be housed. Last night Phil slept rough after a relentless train of events led to him missing his place in the shelter. With sleepy eyes and head, he still managed to engage with us thoughtfully and creatively - even after a night of solid no-sleep. Perhaps that's one of the biggest joys joys of art making, it takes you out of yourself - and for an hour or two you enter a different real.

Phil and his folded books

There's a lot of talk about loneliness among our older generations and the impact it can have on peoples health and wellbeing- but it's something that can hit any of us at any age and for Phil loneliness contributed to homelessness.

'I were happy having a flat, cosy and warm but not having anyone to talk to…. 

(Rough sleeping?) ‘This time its been since December 10^th last year. At the moment we’re sleeping in Churches and chapels, all done through the Church and The Booth Centre. (* The Greater Manchester Winter Night Shelter) Sleeping inside the church- I’m a Methodist, I hadn’t been into a chapel since I was a kid. Everyday it’s a different place, think they’ve just started it recently. The Booth Centre knows before we go out. Last night would have been in a foyer of a church, another place a room- all with campbeds, better than a mattress on the floor. There might be 9 people sleeping there, varies. Its good of them to do it, they open at 6.30, earlier than the other shelters and you get a warm meal at night.

The other shelters, there’s the night shelters at Hulme Library that opens at 8.45 or 9.15. In Harper Hey, that opens 8- 8.30 at the latest, as far as I know they are run by the council. You get toast and a warm drink and cold food, but with the Church you get a hot meal- very considerate of them to do it. The rucksack I’ve got now was given to me by one of the vicars.

I leave the shelters, then come here, then me and Wally go to the library- I’ll probably fall asleep there- I missed my bus stop last night and missed the shelter last night, had to sleep rough- didn’t sleep.

'My Journey, Bloody' artist book made by Phil.

Up to last night I haven’t slept rough, not this time, but in the 80s spent two years sleeping on the streets in Lancaster, back of the town hall on a bench. In them days there were more chance of getting into a B&B or into a flat, there were more of them. Now there’s nothing.  Where are all these council places they’re meant to be building? You look around and there are empty buildings, empty factories, they could be turned into places to live.

When I was younger I had a decent life, I travelled in Germany, Belgium- my dad was serving in the Signals, in the army.

Got to take each day as you can. I had my own flat in Oldham for 9 months, but nobody was talking, none of the neighbours, everyone was unfriendly. So I gave it up, I went back to me mothers where I was brought up.

What (personal possessions) I have is at my mothers, my City and Guilds Certificate for welding. There’s not a lot of that trade, not much knocking out of doors now, cheaper to replace them with new.

I’ve got 3 homeless applications in 3 different councils, and still nothing from any of them. Kirklees I put that one in half way through last year, Bradford put in the spring of last year, Preston put in 4 and a half months ago and still nothing- applying for a house so not on the streets as you can see.

I were happy having a flat, cosy and warm but not having anyone to talk to….'

 
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