Thanks to an HLF investment of £55,700, over the next six months two London-based organisations will highlight and record this under-documented part of the UK’s heritage.

Cardboard Citizens - Home Truths Festival

Cardboard Citizens has been awarded £45,800 to create a series of free public events exploring the history of homelessness and social housing over the last 150 years.

The events will be held alongside the organisation’s theatre production Home Truths, a season of nine newly commissioned plays at The Bunker in London, marking the organisation’s 25th anniversary and focusing on pivotal moments in housing history, including Victorian attitudes to housing the poor, squatting in the 1970s and Right to Buy legislation.

The project will train and work with volunteers to curate a programme of exhibitions, film nights, a walking tour, talks and workshops. Cardboard Citizens’ aim is to help both the public and people affected by homelessness to understand the UK’s current housing situation and how it fits within our wider history.

Adrian Jackson, Artistic Director and CEO of Cardboard Citizens, said: "HLF’s grant will enable us to offer a thought-provoking free programme that will engage not only the general public but also people directly affected by homelessness. This festival will explore how the state of housing today can be understood in the context of history; not just asking ‘How did we get here?’ but also ‘What do we do next?’.”

Find out more on the Cardboard Citizens website.

Museum of Homelessness – Building a resilient future

A HLF grant of £9,900 will allow the Museum of Homelessness (MoH) to begin to build the first national collection for homelessness in the UK.

This project will lay the foundations for MoH’s long-term aim of expanding into a public-facing museum by strengthening its operations and growing its archive. The current archive includes objects, documents and press clippings from private individuals and organisations including Groundswell and the Simon Community, as well as items from the MoH’s current State of the Nation programme – a national programme exploring homelessness in 2017.

The project will also work with people who have experienced homelessness, training them to capture new testimonies for the archive.

Matt Turtle, MoH co-founder, said: “These stories belong to all of us and this grant will enable us to fulfil our obligations to preserve, interpret and share these stories in order to make hidden voices visible and learn lessons from the past.”

Find out more on the Museum of Homelessness website.