I am pleased to announce that Eye Spy will get another outing at the Centre for Partnerships GEM shack being held in Bradford on 11th November 2017 courtesy of Gentoo Group.
The GEM programme is a CIH endorsed training and mentoring process for young professionals working in social housing and is designed to develop the leadership talent of the future. It is sponsored by Incommunities Housing in Bradford amongst others.
(click on images to enlarge)
The first GEM shack of the year focuses on the reason we all do this job – homelessness – or, to be more precise, the prevention of homelessness. That is where “Eye Spy” comes in, by setting the mood for the day. Hard hitting, the exhibition pulls no punches and by concentrating on what is seen (as opposed to who is seeing) places the viewer in homeless shoes. There are no homeless people in Eye Spy. The viewer becomes, for the moment, homeless. The viewer sees what life looks like to the dispossessed.
The effect is a sobering reminder of why we strive to do what we do to provide the essential safety net of social housing and why those golden folk at Simon on the Streets devote their working lives (and also chunks of their private life) to working patiently with the hardest homeless cases, gently recovering lost souls to some kind of normality.
Eye Spy was produced in association with Simon for their 2015 calendar and is used to raise awareness of homelessness. It has been exhibited across the country and continues to be shown wherever and whenever possible.