Food for Thought is our partnership project with Pret Foundation Trust. This provides monthly creative arts workshops for ex-offenders and homeless people on Pret’s Apprenticeship Scheme, enabling them to develop social skills and confidence as they prepare for permanent full-time employment. (This article is from 2016.)

Only 2% of homeless people are currently in full-time employment despite 77% expressing the desire to work.

Through our workshops, 60 apprentices each year have the opportunity to work with our professional artists. During 2015/15, they have been expressing themselves through Rosemary Harris’ and James Baldwin’s drama and writing workshops respectively, and channelling their musical energy with songwriter Aga Serugo-Lugo.

Kayley, an ex-offender, expressed how she felt the drama workshops had benefited her: “They give you a clean slate. I’ve proven myself because I know who I am now and I ended up getting a permanent job”. Have a read of some of the participants’ poems below as they explore feelings of isolation, frustration, denial and hope.

Unspoken

All I think about is the things I never said
All the conversations missed and pages never read.
If I wrote a book, would you look?
Maybe run away
Hot under the collar
Like a jumper on a summer day.
All these situations I can’t move past
All my dedication, isolation.

Untitled

I can see the sky is blue
But my mind is stuck in grey scale
Not understanding, grasping, food for thought
Why are we fasting?
Time flies and we say it’s precious
Yet we waste so much
Procrastination is contagious
To feel is not to touch
The difference is similarity
Cloudiness is clarity, hot is cold
Young is old, selfishness is charity
You laugh when you’re mad at me.

Untitled

The train by a fraction departed
My day was ruined before it had started
I can’t be late
I can’t translate
A journey once draught now slanted.

Denial

I wish I knew back then the person I would become
Wrong crowds invite misconceptions, so how can I blame you?
How can I show you your warped ideals
By harvesting the parade of my own greatness
Would you look? Would you care? Would you accept and understand?
Quake under this new friend knowledge?
Don’t be afraid of who you are.

Untitled

I was young, I never had a chance to say goodbye.
See what I have become now
So I throw my fist and do a punch
I send down a wish from a place up above
I feel so empty but I dance my way through
Thick and thin when your good isn’t good enough
All that you touch tumbles down inside of me
And it hurts so bad I can hardly breathe
With a sharp knife for a short life
I’ve had just enough time
So I put on my best suit and play with my toys
What I never said was done
Fake face, fake eyes, I see everything in black
But deep down I feel colour
And that’s what he would have liked.

This year’s Speak With My Voice project, generously funded by Pret Foundation Trust, began in December 2014 and we’re delighted to be able to share some of the inspiring poetry that has been penned during the workshops on the theme of “Time”. (This article is from 2015.)

Speak With My Voice is our creative writing and music project for people at the margins of society through homelessness, mental illness, loneliness, social exclusion and severe poverty. Since 2003, we’ve been working with drop-in centre Deptford Reach to provide vulnerable adults with the opportunity to express the feelings and develop new trusting relationships, social skills and self-confidence through the process of being creative.

Alongside a series of music workshops, our writer Joanna Ingham has led sessions exploring a variety of writing techniques, drawing on participants’ memories, beliefs and experiences to inspire their poetry. In advance of the unveiling of the book that we’ve compiled of their work, we have prepared a sneak preview of some of their poems for you to enjoy in advance!

MORNING
Completely irrelevant, a boastful brag,
“Here I am, fresh and new. You just love me, don’t you?”

Oh dear me, another hurdle, challenge, to my face.
“Are you man enough? Can you handle me?”

I preferred you in Trinidad, on the windy
north coast. No amount of breeze
could dim the warm hug
of the Caribbean Sea.

Bake popping in the frying pan
to go with slices of cheese, and melting
butter on the scorching dough.

Or mornings in Belmarsh, tea kits
and cartons of milk. Breakfast TV
before art class. All the time in
the world.

Yet always you greet me, always surprise.
You surpass expectations.

Generally I’m happy, specifically I’m happy
in the morning.

Marc P

LOOKING FOR WORK
She places the hat on his head, they stand square. Taking her hands in his, he gently squeezes them, and then they lean for a little kiss. She smiles and he leaves the house. From behind the coal-bunker, he picks up his handwritten sign and grasping it to his chest heads with a good stride to the pick-up point.

Some others are also gathering at the pick-up point under the bridge. The only sound is the swish and vroom from the occasional passing motor. Did someone speak? If they did, it was quick; swish again now and cool humid smells of wet road; grey day.

Quietly confident, apart from the others, and choosing a brighter spot too. By a cord, he hangs the sign from his neck. No-one else has one, but they’ve seen it.

Marc G

CLOCKWISE (SUN DIALLED)
Father Time has forsaken me.
Or has he made a fool of me?
Analogue are my days, dialled somedays,
fleeting moments through time and space.
Tick, tock, stick. I waver through the mix.
Seiko, Quartz and Rolex have transformed,
leaving me behind. It’s noon.
Forty-two years I have been isolated and
bound to this town square.
Unbroken, always reliable, to the specks
that are people passing by me.
I fear the stopping of my hands. Diligence
keeps my ticks and tocks moving.
Sometimes, just sometimes, I wish my ticks
and tocks to stop.

Jason

To celebrate Women’s History Month this March, we’re remembering some of the achievements that the women who have taken part in our creative:u~turn project have attained over the last five years.

Since 2010, with funding and volunteer support from Reed Smith LLP, we have run creative:u~turn at Bethnal Green’s U-Turn Women’s Centre, which supports women who have been trapped in cycles of prostitution, drug addiction, physical abuse and homelessness from an early age. The drop-in centre provides the women with access to support workers, counselling, and kitchen and bathroom facilities.

Through creative:u~turn, our artists have enabled the women to explore their creativity and express their thoughts and feelings without fear, encouraging each to accomplish the sense of personal triumph that taking part in Create’s projects evokes. They have produced some extraordinary work, ranging from strikingly beautiful pieces of art and deeply personal musical compositions to uproariously funny dramatic productions.

Since July last year, the women at U-Turn have been working on one extended project, delving into multiple forms of artistic expression through a series of engaging workshops. Beginning with photography sessions, during which the participants learned a variety of new photographic techniques, they went on to use their photographs as the basis of a story, written together as part of weekly drama sessions. In the following months, they turned their attention to music, channelling their stories into original compositions. Since then, they have created props and a set for their upcoming drama performance which will incorporate each of the art forms that they have explored.

The value and importance of these workshops becomes apparent when you chat to some of the women who have taken part in creative:u~turn. Marie* has regularly attended the project over the last few years. Forced into prostitution from a very young age, Marie was made to enter into an emotionally abusive marriage by her family to ‘cure’ her of being a lesbian. When her husband abandoned her and her daughter, she became a sex worker. Since then she has struggled with addiction problems and comes to the centre up to four times a week, which keeps her “occupied and from going to certain places I really shouldn’t go.”

“I’d be bored if the Create workshops didn’t happen,” she says. “Last week I was looking forward to coming because I said, “Oh, I’m going to finish my picture, I’m going to varnish it.” And I was really looking forward to it! When the day is over I think, “Rubbish, I have to wait another week to get excited!” I think art has changed me for the better. I definitely want to come and do more – I won’t be scared to do art next time.”

As well as the feelings of empowerment and accomplishment that creative:u~turn aims to inspire, its other main goal is to give the vulnerable women who attend the workshops the opportunity to collaborate with and support each another. Many of them experience social isolation and creating an environment that maintains a sense of safety, community and mutual support is vital in helping them to develop trust and foster strong friendships.

Participant Margaret* explained, “You learn so much by communicating with other people who you’ve never met before. I never used to let my guard down like that. When I started taking part in Create’s workshops my confidence was really low. It had been drawn out over the years and I was close to rock bottom. I have just started feeling like myself again, discovering that I can achieve things I never thought were possible.”

According to a report from the Home Office, long-term effects of recent and historic sexual abuse can include post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and panic attacks, depression, social phobia, substance misuse and self-harm. Vulnerable women are encouraged to join in with creative:u~turn and express themselves without fear. Participating in Create’s workshops provides them with validation, company, support and the opportunity to narrate their experiences in a more visceral way than through speech alone.

Each piece of music, drama, art, photography, performance and creative writing that this group has created in these sessions represents the personal triumph of one of London’s underprivileged women. Our plan is to build on these five years of creative:u~turn and keep the triumphs coming for many years to come.

We are grateful to Reed Smith for supporting creative:u~turn and are delighted that they won the prestigious Lord Mayor’s Dragon Award for Social Inclusion in recognition of this in 2012.

* names changed to protect identity

This article is from 2015.