I was invited to create work with people experiencing homelessness in Coventry in February 2020. Plans were made and arrangements put in place, but then a few weeks later the COVID19 pandemic took hold across the world and the United Kingdom was in lockdown. Preparations for undertaking this commission by Coventry UK City of Culture were put on pause, as priorities for assisting people experiencing homelessness by the organisations that work to support them were reconfigured and put into action. A short time later, I participated in setting up the Coventry Arts and Homelessness Forum brought together by Arts and Homelessness International. This monthly forum, a city-wide network of individuals with lived experience of homelessness, and representatives from arts and social sector organisations, enabled me to consolidate links with charities and support services across the city. I was able to lay foundations for a new project working within the changed contexts the challenges of the pandemic had brought about. Through the Coventry Arts and Homelessness Forum I met Ben Davenport, the Arts Coordinator at Crisis, with whom I joined in working with individuals temporarily housed in hotels in Coventry as part of the national ‘Everyone In’ initiative.
When the provision of emergency hotel accommodation began to be wound down in the early part of 2021, we set up weekly workshops in the outdoor area of a café near Coventry train station. Over the following months, every Wednesday afternoon, over 30 people attended the workshops in the café and, later, in the City of Culture Shop. I invited participants to take disposable cameras away to document their experiences and places in the city that are significant to them. I also invited participants to meet with me individually to use digital medium format camera equipment in order to work on the production of a self-portrait for my series Assisted Self-Portraits. I coined the term ‘assisted self-portraits’ not only as a title for this series of photographs but as a way to indicate the process of how the portrait images are created.To make an assisted self-portrait, I meet the participant in locations that are important to them, to teach the individual how to use digital medium format camera equipment with a tripod, handheld flash gun, cable shutter release, and laptop.The final portrait is selected by the participant. As we neared towards the Home: Arts and Homelessness Festival held in October 2021 as part of Coventry UK City of Culture, collectively we worked to curate and make decisions about an outdoor public exhibition on Warwick Row and the selection and sequencing of images in this publication.
Depicting or describing another person’s experience of homelessness is complex. 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, Agency seeks to challenge preconceptions of homelessness and calls for the communities of Coventry to engage differently with those experiencing homelessness. The photographs and Assisted Self-Portraits featured 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.