Designers unite to end youth homelessness

Youth homelessness is a national crisis, says Poppy Jamieson, but a there’s a campaign that’s working to help young people into their own home

In the midst of the UK housing crisis, youth homelessness is on the rise. When 103,000 young people asked for help from a local authority last year, it’s easy to feel angry that this group in society is being failed.

But with frustration comes energy, which if captured and channelled correctly, can be used as a force for change. That’s what the charity End Youth Homelessness (EYH) seeks to do in its awareness and fund raising campaigns.

So we were thrilled to collaborate with them on a creative T-shirt campaign, and raise money for the vital work they do.

I work at Jelly - a production company and artist management agency representing artists across a range of disciplines – and after getting in touch with EYH, wanted to create a collective of artists who could come together to help tackle youth homelessness.

Our artists were excited when we presented them with the idea of collaborating with EYH, and at the idea of using their creativity to make a difference to the lives of young people.

We decided to create a tee shirt campaign with EYH, bringing together a group of five of our illustrators: Biff, Hannah Warren, Marylou Faure, Tishk Barzanji, and Tom Guilmard.

The #HomeIsWhere campaign seeks to raise awareness for EYH’s Housing Fund, which helps homeless young people into a home of their own.

With this in mind, EYH provided the theme ‘Home is Where…’, which offered the artists an opportunity to think about what home means to them, or what it might mean for a young person who doesn’t have a place to call home. The resulting artworks are varied and are all united by their message of hope for homeless young people to turn their lives around.

The artworks are printed on organic and ethically made T-shirts. This gives members of the public the chance to support the work of EYH.

The price of a T-shirt - just £20 - is the amount it costs EYH to provide a young person with an hour of help with a resettlement professional, who will help a young person find a home of their own and escape homelessness for good.

EYH’s Housing Fund provides young people with the practical tools they need to move into their own accommodation. The Housing Fund is vital because only once they have a safe and secure place to call home, are young people able to start overcoming the other barriers they face and escape homelessness for good.

The support of the public is now more important than ever, following some shocking research findings by a EYH member charity, Centrepoint, which reveal the extent of the battle faced by homeless young people in the UK.

The main cause of youth homelessness is family breakdown, and when young people are forced out of their homes, they find themselves either stuck in hostels, unable to move on to anything more permanent, or worse, drifting from one sofa to the next or wandering the streets and taking refuge wherever possible.

The research found that homeless young people are unable to move out of these circumstances because the benefits they receive are not enough to cover the cost of renting.

Through buying a #HOMEISWHERE T-shirt or sharing the artworks on social media, you can help EYH spread the word that every young person deserves a place to call home, and help a young person start their journey out of homelessness.

Poppy Jamieson works at Jelly London, and is working with EYH to help end youth homelessness. You can buy an End Youth Homelessness T-shirt here