Home: Art and Homelessness Festival coming to Coventry this October

8 October - 16 Oct 2021

The premiere of a new musical, an outdoor photography exhibition, visual art and an open mic session will be some of the highlights of a nine-day festival in Coventry, which has been co-produced by people who have lived experience of homelessness.

Coventry City of Culture Trust has worked with Arts & Homelessness International and other partner organisations in the city to create HOME: Art and Homelessness Festival, which is taking place in venues across the city from October 8 to October 16.

It marks a week-long celebration of arts and homelessness projects, coinciding with World Homeless Day on October 10.

Chenine Bhathena, Creative Director of Coventry City of Culture Trust, said: “When we set out to create UK City of Culture in Coventry, it was clear that our citizens and communities wanted to have meaty conversations and draw attention to some of the big local global issues in the city.

“Creating joyful and memorable shows and events, but with a strong social conscience. I am delighted that we have been able to work with residents with experience of homelessness, to discuss the state of the nation in the 21st century, to throw a spotlight onto the incredible work the city council and housing sector are leading but also developing our aspirations for the future, co-created with citizens.

“It is testament to the collaboration, innovation and creativity of all involved, local and national partners, and a huge range of people taking part, that we have this broad and fascinating series of events taking place in the city.”

Cardboard Citizen’s electrifying new musical, The Ruff Tuff Cream Puff Estate Agency, a co-production with Coventry 2021, will premiere at the Belgrade Theatre, while an outdoor photography exhibition, Agency, by acclaimed photographer Anthony Luvera, will be unveiled in Warwick Row.

ART = HOME, a visual art exhibition, which presents artwork by local and international artists, all with current or previous experience of homelessness, will take place in the Belgrade Theatre.

Additional events include a Variety Showcase and Open Mic night featuring music, poetry and spoken word at Coventry Central Library and the Coventry Sleepout at Coventry Cathedral in partnership with St. Basil’s.

Send a Smile, postcard exhibition by Hayley Harmen and Beth Fiducia-Brookes in partnership with Underground Lights, Crisis, the Belgrade Theatre and Arts and Homelessness International, will appear at the Coventry City of Culture shop and the West Midlands Police Museum.

There will also be talks, debates and practice exchange at the second International Arts and Homelessness summit lead by Arts & Homelessness International.

The festival is a co-creation between the Coventry City of Culture’s Caring City team, Arts & Homelessness International and the Arts & Homelessness Steering Committee, more than half of which are or have been homeless.

The project, which is supported with funding from Spirit of 2012, aims to nurture and develop skills and provide a legacy of experience to continue this creative work beyond the life of City of Culture.

This is being achieved through a pioneering three-year project to embed arts and creativity into the homelessness strategy of Coventry City Council and strengthen and connect arts and homelessness practice around Coventry.

This has already had wide-reaching impacts – during the Covid-19 crisis, the City Council ran the largest arts programme in any Covid hotel in the UK in partnership with Crisis, City of Culture and Arts & Homelessness International.

The City Council is also deepening commitments and methods to co-create homelessness policy with homeless people themselves using theatre.

Councillor David Welsh, Coventry City Council’s Cabinet Member for Housing and Communities, said: “We are always looking at different ways to engage with rough sleepers and those at risk of homelessness and improve the service we and our partners provide. The Art and Homelessness Festival is one way we can explore where we are and the challenges we face as a city, and that is why it is so important.”

Ruth Hollis, CEO of funder Spirit of 2012, said: “Big events like Coventry UK City of Culture and participation in arts and culture have the power to transform people’s lives and build stronger communities, creating lasting change. The HOME: Arts and Homelessness Festival shows how this can be done − creating opportunities for people who are homeless and at risk of being homeless by working directly with artists, listening and sharing their stories and channelling their creativity. We’re delighted to support this festival within a festival, and really looking forward to the launch.”

Matt Peacock MBE, Arts & Homelessness International, said: ‘We are excited for the world to see the incredible skills and achievements of artists and creatives who are or have been homeless from Coventry. And, also, to show how the Home Festival is part of an ambitious city-wide approach to unite behind the arts as a powerful tool to enable people to thrive not just survive.”

Anthony Luvera said: “People experiencing homelessness are often excluded, overly spoken for, or depicted in ways they have no control over. By inviting people who are or have been homeless to use photography to represent themselves and their experiences through the creation of Agency for Coventry UK City of Culture, this work challenges preconceptions of homelessness and depicts Coventry in completely new ways. The Assisted Self-Portraits and photographs made by participants in Agency, I believe, are a valuable document of the city of Coventry in the year 2021, and an important progression of the long-term projects I have created with people experiencing homelessness in cities and towns around the UK for almost twenty years.”

Amy Howard, a participant of Agency by Anthony Luvera, said: “I liked taking pictures for Agency. Anthony was very nice, kind, and supportive. I enjoyed coming to the workshops and seeing my friends and Ben from Crisis. Working with Anthony to create my Assisted Self-Portrait in a special place brought back good memories.”

AGENCY – Anthony Luvera

Fri 08 Oct - Thu 28 Oct 2021

Warwick Row

Agency is a new body of work commissioned for Coventry UK City of Culture which extends Anthony Luvera’s ongoing work made with people experiencing homelessness in towns and cities across the United Kingdom over the past 20 years. Throughout 2021, Luvera invited participants to use disposable cameras to document their experiences and places in the city that are significant to them. Participants were also invited to use digital medium format camera equipment in order to work on the production of a self-portrait for the artist’s ongoing series Assisted Self-Portraits. The final images will be exhibited along Warwick Row, a road containing many estate agents that leads into the city centre from Coventry Train Station, throughout the duration of the HOME festival and featured in a community newspaper distributed freely across the city.

ART = HOME Visual Art Exhibition

Fri 08 Oct - Sat 16 Oct 2021

Belgrade Theatre

As part of HOME: Art and Homelessness Festival, this exhibition is created by artists across Coventry with current or previous lived experience of homelessness.  The exhibition will display phenomenal visual artworks sitting alongside pieces from international artists who have had similar experiences.

Co-created by David Tovey (Arts & Homelessness International) and Hayley Harman, from the Arts & Homelessness steering committee, the exhibition will be on display between 8th -16th October, incorporating a range of art forms, including painting, sketching, murals and sculpture, and celebrating the talent from within the homeless communities.

The Ruff Tuff Cream Puff Estate Agency
Sat 09 Oct - Sat 16 Oct 2021

Belgrade Theatre Main Stage

Tickets from £10

The Ruff Tuff Cream Puff Estate Agency is a feel-good musical about community and DIY activism from the 1970s, based on an original work by the late activist, poet and playwright, Heathcote Williams. It tells the true story of a group of revolutionaries, artists and free-thinkers who created the world’s first estate agency for squatters, who offered free housing for anyone in need, and founded their own 1.8-acre microstate called ‘The Free and Independent Republic of Frestonia’ in Notting Hill in 1977. Now reimagined as a musical in Cardboard Citizens’ 30th anniversary year, The Ruff Tuff Cream Puff Estate Agency, is directed by the Company’s founding Artistic Director, Adrian Jackson, written by Coventry-born playwright, Sarah Woods, with music by former lead guitarist of the ground-breaking collective Chumbawamba, Boff Whalley.

Its eight-strong cast is: Hannah Azuonye, Matt Burns, Hollie Cassar, Wesley Charles, Daisy Ann Fletcher, Benji Lord, Joseph Tweedale and Sarah Workman. Joining the cast of The Ruff Tuff Cream Puff Estate Agency is a brand new choir uniting local people with lived experience of homelessness formed in partnership with The Choir With No Name. Cardboard Citizens has been working in Coventry since March, and half of the community chorus were participants in its Cardboard Camps residency at Belgrade Theatre. 

The Ruff Tuff Cream Puff Estate Agency is co-produced by Cardboard Citizens, Coventry UK City of Culture, and Belgrade Theatre. It is directed by Adrian Jackson, with book and lyrics by Sarah Woods, music by Boff Whalley, based on an original work by Heathcote Williams. The production is designed by Ruth Sutcliffe, with lighting by Emma Chapman, sound by Chris Murray and choreography by Mark Smith. The Musical Director is Akintayo Akinbode, Assistant Director is Reaya Sealey, and the Costume Supervisor is Sarah Holland.

10% of tickets to Ruff Tuff are available at £1 to people with lived experience of or at risk of homelessness. For further information on the scheme or to access tickets, please contact:

Hadassah@cardboardcitizens.org.uk

Send a Smile Postcard Exhibition

West Midlands Police Museum and Coventry City of Culture Shop

Fri 08 Oct - Sat 16 Oct 2021

‘When we smile, it makes us feel good, as well as the people around us. There are many things that make us smile.’

Beginning in Coventry during the pandemic, the Send a Smile postcard project has travelled to homeless communities in the USA, Brazil, South Africa, India, Japan and Australia. 

Developed by Underground Lights with support from Coventry UK City of Culture 2021, Arts & Homelessness International, The Belgrade Theatre and Crisis, this international project was designed by Hayley Harman and Beth Fiducia-Brookes as a way to engage creatively with people experiencing deep isolation in hostels during lockdown.  In an aim to get these people thinking about smiling in the hope that this would bring them joy, participants were encouraged to decorate postcards as a way of recording their feelings of joy.  After its success in Coventry, the project was extended to communities around the world, with some of these postcards now being displayed at the HOME festival. 

‘ART is where the HOME is’ Creative Hub

Mon 11th – Sat 16th October

Methodist Central Hall and Coventry City of Culture shop

Drop into the HOME Festival Creative Hub to participate in a range of creative activities whilst chatting to some of the people involved in developing the HOME festival.  Hear their stories whilst printing t-shirts, making bracelets, learning the guitar, pebble painting or playing a game of giant homeless monopoly.

Inspired by creative workshops with the homeless community across the city, these informal sessions give us all space to create something new and make new connections.  Saturday 16th October will focus on activities for children so the whole family can create and celebrate with us.

HOME Variety Showcase & Open Mic Night

Sun 10th October

Coventry Central Library

Join us for a celebration of the talent across the homeless community of Coventry.  Developed through a steering committee and inspiration sessions led by people with current or past lived experience of homelessness, the variety showcase and open mic night gives participants the opportunity to perform in one of Coventry’s most well-known performance venues.  Formerly the Locarno Club and Tiffany’s, but now home to Coventry Central Library, through the 1960s to the 1980s the venue hosted acts such as Chuck Berry, Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Clash, Blondie and many more.  Whether you want to take part or just soak up the acts on offer, this event will be a fabulous celebration of the amateur performers from the city. 

The 2nd International Arts & Homelessness Summit
Mon 11th – Wed 13th October
Methodist Central Hall

As part of the HOME: Arts & Homelessness Festival, Arts & Homelessness International (AHI) and a co-produced steering group from Coventry will host the second ever International Arts and Homelessness Summit.

Taking place at the Methodist Central Hall in Coventry, delegates from across the UK and the online global community will gather to share practice, ideas and policy about arts and homelessness.

Highlights of the 2021 programme include:

Discussions on arts and homelessness including women and homelessness, COVID arts projects, policy co-creation, cultural spaces responding to homelessness, trauma-informed care
Practice Exchange and Professional Development including dance, how to monitise your work as an artist, putting on a project, producing your music
Audience-led conversations
Creative moments throughout the summit
Project Speed Dating

AHI works to bring positive change to people, projects and policy in the homelessness community through arts and creativity. This will be a chance to celebrate the work of the local and international artists who are or who have been homeless.

In line with AHI’s commitment to co-production, 50% of the tickets for the Summit will be given free to people who are or who have been homeless.

HOME GROWN FILM NIGHT

Tue 12th October

The Box, Fargo Village

Home Grown film night will be showcasing short films based on existing community garden projects coordinated by Grand Union in Birmingham and by the Foleshill Community Centre in Coventry.

Both projects aim at providing new spaces of possibilities for people that have experienced exclusion, homelessness, or financial hardship and who are usually excluded from or do not have access to those spaces. The films will show that community gardening can be a radical act allowing communities involved to gain access to fresh and healthy food, make their city more beautiful, protect their environment, improve their mental and physical wellbeing.   Films include:

Grand Union: Growing Project

What happens when a Birmingham arts organisation, a homeless charity and local organisations come together to clean up a disused space for a community garden for people experiencing homelessness?

Filmed in Birmingham during Spring 2021, over 4 different locations, the film captures the real life stories, dreams and achievements of the people involved in the project, from participants, artists, gardeners and volunteers to the organisations underpinning the work. The garden becomes a place of shared stories, plant growing, food making, and also sanctuary, recovery and meaningful Production.

Foleshill Community Garden: Cultivating Wellbeing

The film ‘Cultivating Wellbeing’ captures the story of the Foleshill Community Centre Foodbank and Social Supermarket and its community garden. Participants gather at least once a week to do various activities in the garden, learn to grow vegetables from seeds to harvest and cook a meal to be shared at the end of the session. The project started in the midst of the first lockdown and considerably improved mental wellbeing of its participants by allowing them to have a safe, green space to gather.

David Tovey’s new work: Unknown Soldier

In 2019 it was reported that 16,000 ex-servicemen were homeless or in prison. Artist and Campaigner David Tovey used to be one of them. In a new landmark piece, you will journey through the life of the ‘Unknown Soldier’, a work that has been in the making for 29 years. In this powerful film and performance, Tovey draws you into a psychological space of made up of his own experiences of homelessness, attempted suicide and serving his country.

A powerful film provides a disorientating and stark backdrop to a performance blending ambient sound, spoken interview, historical archive footage and moving image to explore homelessness, alcoholism, addiction and the life of a homeless soldier. To accompany the film, David performs and narrates the journey of a soldier and his battle with mental health, PTSD and homelessness. The whole experience guides us through memories lost as David takes the ultimate decision to end his life. It is raw, uncompromising and brutal.

Home Grown film night will be showcasing short films throughout the night featuring 

The Shed: Underground Lights

"The Shed” is a short filmed project starring Michael Green and the voices from a wide range of our community in Coventry who have experienced homelessness. The film is directed by Francesca Robson, filmed by Ryan Christopher and paired with a new fresh beat from Wes Finch all commissioned by Underground Lights Community Theatre and funded by the Heart of England Community Foundation (Road to 2021 grant).

The purpose of the project is to shine a light on the differing experiences of home; where it might be and what it means. The project has been inspired by how we can explore homelessness through a different lens, mostly using movement and audio to push our audiences to question and address their own pre conceptions of our homeless community. The process has been long and difficult with many set backs due to COVID-19, but we finally found a way to capture multiple voices through the help of Benedict Davenport from Crisis and many poignant conversations from two workshops we ran with both Crisis and Underground Lights. This means the audio is a tapestry of voices from across the City and this has created a really beautiful memoir of experiences and stories from the Streets. 

Michael’s story which can be seen in the visual has been interpreted through movement and encapsulates his experience of living in multiple different properties and finally living in a shed. His story tells of strength and resilience. In Michael's words, ‘I went through hell and back again, but now I can make any place a home’.