Art exhibition drawing attention to homelessness opens in Weymouth (From Dorset Echo)

Art exhibition drawing attention to homelessness opens in Weymouth

11:00am Friday 10th February 2012 in Stage By Ruth Meech

A POWERFUL exhibition of art detailing the dangers and hopelessness of teenage homelessness opens in Weymouth next week.

Put together by the residents of 2 Pottery Lane – which is also known as The Foyer – the mixed media display is a bright and colourful combination of painting, collages and installations, including a sleeping bag embroidered with the message ‘sleeping rough means not sleeping’.

The project has been aided by a £500 grant from the Co-Operative Community Fund plus help from local companies including D’signs in Weymouth who donated four canvases for the artists to use.

Pottery Lane resident Alex Dunham, pictured, has created two pieces of work for the exhibition. One is an umbrella plastered with words and cut out newspaper headlines that emphasise the loneliness and isolation of living on the streets. The other piece will be two rucksacks packed with different substances.

“One will be full of ‘drugs’ or flour and other substances that look like drugs because that is what people assume that teenagers who live rough will be carrying around with them,” she explained. “The other will have text books and school uniforms because there are a lot of kids out there who don’t have a home but who still manage to get to school.”

Alex, who is 18, hopes to go into youth work one day and is currently looking at volunteering at the new Weymouth fire station and with a local Beaver colony. Like all the residents at 2 Pottery lane she has a tale to tell, having been fostered at the age of four.

Originally from Weymouth, she went to Bournemouth before returning to her hometown and sleeping rough for a month until she got a place at The Foyer.

“Just because kids are on the street, people think they are on drugs or an ex-prisoner, a thief or an alcoholic but they are just kids and some of them go to college from the street,” said Alex.

Jacqui Redfern, deputy manager of 2 Pottery Lane, says she hopes the artwork will change people’s preconceptions of what it means to be young an on the streets.

She said: “The idea of the exhibition is to break that negative attitude.”

Art, Homelessness, Youth is at the Mulberry Gallery, Weymouth Library in Great George Street from 1pm on February 13 until February 18 during library opening hours.