How To Make Art That Brings Housing Justice invites its audience to consider the nuances of community, activism, and, of course, housing justice.
It’s hard to describe How To Make Art That Brings Housing Justice. It’s more of a multimedia presentation and Socratic event than a traditional theatre experience. The creative team describes it as a “dramatised talk and interactive workshop.” Though its purpose was not entirely clear, the focus of the 75-minute session at Riverside Theatre was SPID, an acronym standing for Social Progressive Interconnected Diverse. The session was led by Helena Thompson, who refers to herself as SPID. SPID is also the name of her passion project, SPID Theatre, a youth theatre dedicated to sharing council estate stories and advocating for housing justice. For clarity’s sake, I will refer to Thompson by her legal name, but the thin line between herself and SPID Theatre (SPID) is a critical part of How To Make Art That Brings Housing Justice.
The workshop invites its audience to consider the nuances of community, activism, and, of course, housing justice. In 2017, a fire at Grenfell Tower estate in North Kensington took the life of over 70 people as a result of negligence by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) and the council’s refusal to heed resident warnings. How To Make Art That Brings Housing Justice speaks to the aftermath of this tragedy and the reinvigorated national focus on housing justice. SPID was operating out of the nearby Kensal House estate and had received RBKC council funding, prompting backlash over the theatre’s presence. Thompson was labelled an outsider and SPID was accused of taking funds deserved by Kensal House residents.
The most theatrical part of the workshop is the dramatised storytelling, when Thompson weaves her personal history and the history of SPID alongside the history and politics of council estates. In this way, she inherently centres herself in a struggle she has not lived. That said, Thompson does not shy away from this reality. Instead, she reckons with her positionality, role as outsider at Kensal House and the need to centre lived experience in organising. She ends on the victories that SPID and Kensal House tenants have since accomplished by working together, on behalf of the community.
The workshop was highly interdisciplinary. Participants wrote reflections on housing justice and browsed the handmade exhibit on Kensal House’s history. Along with the dramatised story portion, Thompson’s presentation incorporated video, music, pre-recorded audio, poetry, visual art, audience participation, call-and-response, and more. The most impactful pieces were poems by young people about life in the council estate.
Unfortunately the back-and-forth between mediums felt frenetic, often unnecessary, and disrupted momentum. Props like party blowers were fun, but chaotic and made it difficult to absorb the dense stream of information. Participants were engaged but some looked notably uncomfortable with the persistent audience participation, despite permission to sit out. A few exercises were infantile for an adult audience, and the use of buzzwords was occasionally gratuitous.
Though interesting and informative, it was not entirely clear who the workshop was for. The audience included SPID organisers and people unfamiliar with the theatre. Thompson described the workshop as a roadmap, but participants received certificates for ‘learning how to make art that brings housing justice’ without concrete guidance for community organising beyond SPID. How To Make Art That Brings Housing Justice is more successful as an inspiring case study of successful community organising at a time when good news is harder and harder to come by.