Hear Our Story

Hear Our Story is a project developed by residents of the Rockingham Estate, providing art workshops in Southwark to empower and enable local people to share their stories and express their views and feelings about issues important in their lives. Using art, storytelling and drama, the project aims to make people stand up, have their stories heard, and issues addressed.

Why did you think your project was important to address health and wellbeing in your community?
Rents, repairs, mould, damp, vermin, housing, cost of living - Everybody has a story, and the right to be heard. How can you get your landlord, the council, or anybody to actually listen to your concerns? Creativity can be very useful in breaking down barriers in difficult conversations, and can support people to explore the issues they're facing in a safe space and in a playful way that is accessible to people of all walks of life.

What's something that's surprised you in this process?
Our work ended up at the Tate Modern! We created a banner, using art created in the workshops, and were able to display it at a Southwark Champions event, organised by Southwark Council in collaboration with the modern arts museum. We learnt a lot during this process. In total we offered 10 opportunities for participation, and we estimated that around 100 people took part, some attending more than one event.

In addition to their art work, people completed feedback forms and wrote comments - most about poor housing conditions such as damp, mould and overcrowding, the latter most prevalent in comments from children and teenagers. It was beautiful to see people suggest solutions that would improve their housing experience too, and the overall feedback we got from people was very positive. We noticed that people felt better about themselves - they are positive and proud despite the poor conditions of some of their accommodation. The sessions lifted people’s spirits and generated feelings of happiness.

What change would you like to see so that more people can be empowered to make decisions on the issues that affect them?
We created safe spaces for individuals and family groups to come together and create art. The sessions and feedback have clearly demonstrated that this form of art workshop has both a strong therapeutic element to it that is effective across ages and cultures and has a very positive impact on people's wellbeing. We have demonstrated that there is a demand for free-form creative arts sessions and pop-ups for adults and families, and this evidence can be used to support further funding applications for projects like ours. Our creative art sessions will continue in the Rockingham Community Centre, funded by Southwark Council (Neighbourhood Fund), and we're planning an event to bring the diverse communities on our estate together, focussing on sharing food and creativity. We will share our impact report with councillors at Southwark Council and our Ward Councillors, and we hope that it can influence their decision-making on funding initiatives like these.