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Guideline Audience Age Range: 18+
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.
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.
Mahare Green Movement, Kenya : HOME
Directed and edited by Kongo Mwaura
Filmed by Colas Lemaire
Music by Alex Makau Nzioka, Wyban Mwangi Kanyi and Kevin Ngong Wamaitha
Mathare being the second largest informal settlement in Nairobi, Kenya houses approximately half a million of people and it's considered not homely due to the standards of living & deteriorated environment. The film ' HOME' follows three young men: Lyrical farmer, Flawless konya & Wyban kanyi who are musicians. rooted here there challenging the idea of what they have experienced as home growing up by campaigning for the greening and rehabilitation of their spaces.
What does it mean to call Kenya’s second-largest informal settlement home? Mathare is in a state of severe environmental degradation in the midst of a changing climate. The degradation, rooted in decades of structural oppression from the colonial period, is visible from the illegal dumps, lack of access to water and proper sanitation, a heavily polluted river, a profound culture of land grabbing, forced evictions, not to mention the grim public health decline. The impact of this on the younger generation is an ecological trauma with which they must persistently negotiate, silently. Slowly. Mathare Green Movement artists serve as a focal point on the many voices daring to re-imagine the kind of home Mathare must become. Through music and planting trees, Mathare artists are linking the slow violence of environmental degradation to its consequences on their own identities; establishing the connection between a healthy environment and quality of life. The video is a reflection on the past, the present, as well as the Mathare Futurism vision of possible realities and new futures for Mathare.
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.
Underground Lights: The Shed
"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’.
Join us for a week-long celebration of arts and homelessness projects in Coventry, created and co-produced by people who have current or previous lived experience of homelessness. The festival takes place at venues across the city centre between Friday 8 - Saturday 16 October, coinciding with World Homelessness Day on Sunday 10 October 2021.
