result!

as expected, no reply from the passage today. so i gave it a few hours and then forwarded the email to another centre and within half an hour had a positive response. hurrah!

here's the correspondance:

Hi there,
I'm an art student studying foundation graphics at Camberwell College Of Art in South London. I'm currently researching and preparing for a final self-directed project which is assessed for the whole course's grade. After much research into current social issues I have decided to produce a series of short documentary films which as a collection give an insight into the lives of london's rough sleepers and homeless. By doing this I hope to make the audience take note of the issue of homelessness and pay much more respect to the unfortunate people who experience it. I am writing to you because after speaking to a number of homeless people on the streets of London, they recommended I try the 999 club because it offers the opportunity to speak to lots of homeless people in a friendly environment. I'd like to know about the possibility of getting your consent to meet and talk to people at the day centre for a number of weeks, with a view to asking some if I could make films about them. I understand that a degree of sensitivity and tact is needed when approaching this issue and I would never knowingly offend or upset any of your visitors.
I am grateful you have taken the time to read this, and I look forward to your response,
Yours sincerely,
Elliot Hay

Dear Elliot,
Thank you for your email, very interesting.
Here's the deal, come and see us. Send me a time when you can call byMon-Fri 10-5. We'll meet, see if you can fit in, probably can; but wesometimes have a disaster with that. Then you are very welcome.
What we would like in return is to be able to use some of your images inour own publicity.
Yours ever R

R,
It's so great to hear back from you, I've emailed a few day centres so far and you're the first to actually take the time to reply! This is really good news, I live in Charlton so I can come by any day, any time. I have 4 weeks left to get this done, so the sooner the better, I could even set off right now if convenient. If not, then tomorrow morning or afternoon, whichever is best for you. It would actually be an incredible privilege if you were to use my work for your own publicity, and I would be happy to work through some sort of compromise with you so we can produce something mutually beneficial.
Thanks again for replying,
Yours sincerely,
Elliot

Dear Elliot
Come at 10am tomorrow morning. We can all be paying attention at that point. There is a slight danger you may have to stick around I can see we are seeing Medicins du Monde tomorrow but I am unclear at what timethat is.
We are at SE... but you have probably already located us.
See you then , R

so yeah, i'm gonna head over to the centre tomorrow and pitch my ideas to the guys there and if all goes well i should be visiting the centre every day for the next few weeks. its actually great that these guys replied too, its the 999 Club, and they have three centres all within close proximity to where i live. and they also have close links with goldsmiths students so theres a chance i could be able to get chatting to some of them and see what they think about my concept.

newfound interest//zines

zineswap have an exhibition of their collection on at the gallery above the amersham arms on at the moment. ending iminently though, so that might be another plan for tomorrow. i like the look of this happy birthday series (apologies for the sidewaysness)


also, im about to send through a payment for this zine i stumbled across, n.c.m.c. or nobody calls me chicken. looks just like a nice little collection of photographs and for the price of a couple of postage stamps you cant go wrong.


its blogged here. once this final major project shindig's over with im gonna start a recurring zine. im sure the suspense is killing you already.

shot down.

i summoned up the courage the call the passage homeless centre this morning. but who'd have thought it, they actually have a waiting list for volunteers and i might have to wait 'til the summer. bugger. fear not though, because i sent an email to the director of the centre, something along the lines of this:

hello captain fantastic im a wanky art student and i want to take advantage of the destitute so i can get onto a degree course next year. hit me back y'all. *

should get a reply tomorrow.
read an interesting article on the guardian website today, apparently theres some sort of cult out there which sees it as enlightening to spend 3 days in the lives of the homeless, queuing at soup kitchens, receiving blankets and even begging. morally questionable fo sho. i have to admit i did consider this approach, spending a night sleeping rough to get a better idea of how it feels but i think this snippet of the article sums up every reason why i shouldnt;

'You must be bonkers,' said Peter, a middle-aged, well-educated former IT specialist who lost his job and then his house after suffering a nervous breakdown. 'I don't see the point of you doing this on any level,' he said with politely contained rage. 'What are you going to learn that you don't know already - that's it's horrible being homeless?' His friend asked why we have come in summer. 'If you really care about sharing our pain,' he pointed out mockingly, 'why didn't you come in the middle of winter?'

however, it did shed some light on something ive already read about; the distribution of food and other aids for the homeless at lincoln's inn fields. and after some brief research i now know that its every day at 7.15pm so i think im going to go there tomorrow. do a little drawing. take a few snaps. would be good to have some imagery to work with because at the moment i havent actually done any work.

stay tuned.

* this is obviously not the email i sent but i do realise that however i word a letter, its probably going to come across that way, cos essentially its true. i will be taking advantage of the homeless, but then again any film made about poverty etc will do so. i wonder if this is necessarily a bad thing?

docs.

yesterday i watched another documentary, Penny Woolcock's The Wet House, watch it, it's fascinating.


its an observational film about a hostel for the homeless which respects the inmates' right to drink alcohol, and lots of it. at first, its alarming to see the state of some of the inmates, shouting and fighting, stumbling across the screen and generally being an unruly bunch of drunks. but their behaviour is only a result of the position they've been landed in. as the film goes on we begin to get an interesting insight into some of the inmates' personalities and backstories, but what strikes you by the climax of the film is the relationship shared by the inmates. drawn together by their lives on the street, they now very much rely on eachother's company. as you'll see in a touching moment at the end, despite the hostel being able to rehabilitate its inmates back into independent housing, the wet house is their lives now and it appears many would be happy to live out the rest of their days there. i very much admire woolcock for her tact and sensitivity in dealing with the subject matter, and she has managed to make a truly insightul film, without ever being intrusive.

having watched two inspiring films now, i feel that my work would be very appropriate in documentary/film format. penny woolcock visited the hostel for 3 months without any cameras in order to befriend and gain the trust of the inmates, however i only have 4 weeks, so its going to be tough.

i got chatting to a homeless guy the other night about this issue, and he seemed to think many people are quite open about their lives and always have interesting stories to tell. he recommended i visit a place called the passage in victoria, so i think i'm going to volunteer to work there. starting tomorrow!

robinson's guide to london.

we visited lincoln's inn fields and he asked some of the residents to pose for him. i was shocked at the increase in the numbers of people sleeping out in the seven years id been away but robinson seems quite accustomed to it. he rarely gives anyone money, at least not when im with him. he took me to the war museum, formerly bedlam, the bethlehem royal hospital for the care of the insane. he told me that many of the homeless who sleep out in central london are ex-servicemen and women or former psychiatric patients. london, he says, is a city under siege from a suburban government which uses homelessness, polution, crime, and the most expensive and run down public transport system in any metropolitan city in europe as weapons against londoners' lingering desire for the freedoms of city life.


london, a film by patrick keiller, is a surreal look at early nineties tory-governed england, in the form of a videodiary of london over the course of a year. it prominently features a fictional tour guide, robinson, who expresses a romantic view of the city in his desire for bohemian reclamation. the film is interesting in a number of ways, firstly the distinct style in which it is filmed, with the use of wide angle shots across the city and the camera only ever moving in one scene. also in the combination of the score, the narrator's voice, and the script, london in 1992 seems more like 70 years ago than 17.

watch it here

manifesto.

an old friend.

i used to love a bit of photography, but then i lost my camera and havent picked up one since. that is, until i inherited [shotgunned] this olympus off my granddad.


the camera i used to have was an olympus too, an om101 which had a fantastic mechanical focusing system, but this is the om1 the older and in my opinion way cooler version, so its quite interesting to use two different generations of the same camera.
got these delevoped.

a few changes.

since writing the project proposal i have decided to focus purely on the homeless because i cant really cover everything id set out to, and i feel a better outcome would come from a more specific and detailed project.

one other thought i have had is the need to be sensitive with this subject and not to take advantage of the homeless in order to satisfy my aims.


theres a lot for me to learn here.

FMP.

Project Proposal: Forgotten England

Progress and Achievement:
Since the start of the course I have picked up a greater understanding of the importance of design and communication in our society. Graphic Design is essential for conveying concepts and emotions between one another and although we cannot always change others' points of view it is important to inform them of our own.

Context:
Over the course of the year, I have grown a desire to express the voices of those that cannot always speak for themselves, or who are more often than not overlooked and unheard. During the "interrupt" project I found it very interesting to explore political and social issues through the medium of visual communication. Artists such as the "Guerrilla Girls" and the "Art of Asbestos" take existing and often iconic imagery and play around with the debates that they can provoke by subverting the imagery.

Project Proposal Aims, Methods and Realisation:
For this project, I propose to investigate the lives of the forgotten people of our society, be they the unemployed, undervalued or unloved. In the working world we have problems with poor working conditions, unfair pay and inequality. Often people who experience these problems are doing essential jobs which our society relies upon in order for basic function. In my opinion the labourers, factory workers, bin men and civil servants are the unsung heroes of England. Outside of the working world England experiences high rates of unemployment and homelessness and everybody knows these are pressing issues yet they are never solved. Through in depth research and investigation I intend to bring light to these issues and to the stories and lives of those who really experience Forgotten England. I will use whichever processes are necessary for conveying the concepts i come across, but will stick mainly to visual and print media as well as film if possible. It is essential for the success of my work that i go out into the city and talk to people, get a real feel for the hardship that people of our country go through, and document my findings in detail.

Evaluation:
I will evaluate my progress and consider my approach to the project through the use of a blog, which is a useful tool for multi-media display of my ideas. I aim to link the blog up with other internet users so that my progress can be evaluated and criticised by them. I will also keep a logbook with me to note down thoughts as and when they happen. Furthermore, interim critiques at college will prove vital for the development of my work through discussion with tutors and other students.

don't you just hate it when strangers tell you to smile?

well in response to a brief called how things work, i was that stranger. i published a blog and a series of posters instructing the [non-existant] audience how smiling works and how to do it more often. i actually wanted to make a film based on the imagery i had been working with, which i really liked but i was short for time and ended up with a blog because it seemed the quickest and easiest thing to do. then again that's what the majority of my work is. ah well here's some pictures.

aaaaah

finished. what to write waste with? waste. duh!
et voila;