On 5th September, Shelter Scotland staff and service users set up in central Glasgow to launch our Homelessness: Far From Fixed campaign.
Our campaign is demanding:
- A safe and affordable home for everyone
- Help is available for everyone to keep or find a home
- A strong housing safety net to catch people if they lose their home
- That no-one should ever have to sleep rough on our streets
Staff from across the organisation come together to campaign and get sign-ups from the public. The launch was very successful and attracted fantastic media attention. One of our service users also talked very passionately about the campaign and his experience on STV on the day. We brought along our campaign material, which included our giant snakes and ladders board game called ‘Chance not Choice’. The snakes depict circumstances which may lead to a person losing their home, and the ladders represent circumstances which may lead to a person securing or maintaining a stable home.
Campaign launch in Glasgow – Photo by Phil Wilkinson.
We wanted to use this campaign prop to dispel the myth that homelessness is something that individuals and families bring upon themselves. We wanted to show that homelessness can happen to anyone and can happen for many different reasons. If you complete the game without any housing issues, you have been lucky and have managed to dodge some of the many housing problems that many Scottish households face every day such as job loss, relationship breakdown and illness.
Material for this campaign was developed with the help of our Shelter Scotland service users. During the development phase of our campaign material, we worked with service users to discuss themes and concepts. We wanted to find out which of the material ideas resonated with them, and reflected their experience. We discussed the board game, poster suggestions, slogans, messaging, and how to catch people’s attention. These were interesting and informative sessions, not only were we able to develop material which would best engage people with our campaign – the service user input made our material accurate and representative.
In addition to this, we also asked Shelter Scotland staff what circumstances may contribute to someone losing their home. From this information, we were able to populate the snakes and ladders with accurate, real life scenarios.
Going forward, we will be campaigning with this material in the 4 Hubs across Scotland over the next year. We are aiming to get politicians, the public and organisations signed up to the campaign. To find out the dates of our upcoming campaign days in a city near you, contact izzy_gaughan@shelter.org.uk.
Please sign up online and share with your friends and family – the more support we get the more likely we are to be successful with our campaign – many thanks. www.shelterscotland/farfromfixed