A Bedroom for Everyone: Film screening and workshop

Filmmaker Ed Webb-Ingall will be introducing his new animation A Bedroom For Everyone (15 min) made from 2019 to 2023 with housing activists across the UK, illustrator Sofia Niazi, and animator Astrid Goldsmith.

The introduction and screening will be followed by a practical workshop on how to plan a housing campaign.

A Bedroom for Everyone is intended as a resource for anyone interested in housing struggles and, at The NewBridge Project, will be used as a springboard for a series of workshops on housing activism in the North East, with local community organisers Elgan John (Food and Solidarity) and Safiah Fardin. These workshops form part of our For Solidarity programme.

If you are interested in housing activism, campaigning, the role of art in social movements, community organising, and the importance of solidarity please join us and meet other like-minded people.

So we can keep an eye on numbers and provide enough refreshments for everyone, let us know if you will be attending by emailing hannah@thenewbridgeproject.com

Image credit: Ed Webb-Ingall, A Bedroom for Everyone, exhibition view, Grand Union, 2023. Photo: Patrick Dandy

A Bedroom for Everyone (15min)

A Bedroom for Everyone is part of a long-term research project with Ed Webb-Ingall and Grand Union Gallery, Birmingham and is rooted in the idea that art can be a tool for social change, but only when embedded within communities, with and for them.

Drawing upon research and time spent with housing activist groups across the UK, this project looks at responses and methods to build resilience, resistance and solidarity to the social and economic crisis around housing injustice in this country. Asking what the role of filmmaking is in response to the crisis, the project explores the power of grassroots activism and organising in the face of this ongoing emergency; whilst making space for the camaraderie that unfolds in the community centres and meeting halls where this work takes place.

The animation’s title A Bedroom for Everyone, came out of a list of demands made during a series of creative workshops commissioned by Serpentine Education, with The Portman Early Childhood Centre (London) and the housing charity, Shelter. Over the course of a year, families who were experiencing the impacts of changes in housing policy met online to share their experiences and think about how people could live together differently.  Alongside the need to provide a bedroom for everyone, the list included: community-led decision making; communal gardens; a safe, stable, warm, clean, bright place to live; a job club; a youth club; and childcare.

The animation’s script has been written collaboratively with members of four activist and community groups, each group writing a different character. The groups involved are: Save Druids Heath (Birmingham), Acorn Union (Birmingham), Akwaaba Social Centre for Migrants (London) and Housing Action Southwark & Lambeth (London). Developing the script with members of the community who support people who have lived experience of the housing crisis, the film acts as a resource to encourage people to seek out local groups, join up, ask for help, offer support, raise awareness and raise funds.

A Bedroom for Everyone is available to use as a resource to share with anyone interested or engaged in housing struggles. If you would like to show this film in your community setting, please contact Grand Union Gallery at info@grand-union.org.uk. The animation is available in four languages; Arabic, English, Polish and Spanish.

Commissioned by Grand Union. Generously supported by Oak Foundation, Arts Council England, Serpentine Galleries, ArtFund and University of Birmingham.

About Ed Webb-Ingall

Ed Webb-Ingall is a filmmaker and researcher working with archival materials and methodologies drawn from community video.  He collaborates with groups to explore under-represented historical moments and their relationship to contemporary life, developing modes of self-representation specific to the subject or the experiences of the participants.

About Elgan John

Elgan has several years experience in community organising, particularly in housing.  This was built on two decades of experience in the voluntary sector. He was a founding member of the mutual aid groups in the west end of Newcastle and a founding member of Food and Solidarity. He is a trade unionist and works for a campaigning disability charity.