Episode One – Becoming Newly Homeless
What does it really mean to become homeless?
For many people, homelessness is seen only at the point it becomes visible. But long before someone is sleeping rough or arriving at A&E, there is often a series of unseen challenges including housing insecurity, deteriorating health, financial pressures and difficulty accessing the right support.
In this first episode, Mandy Redvers-Rowe explores what it means to become newly homeless, why homelessness can affect anybody, and how common misconceptions can prevent us from understanding the realities people face.
Words from the Whitechapel Podcast
Words from the Whitechapel is a podcast and creative storytelling project created and hosted by Mandy Redvers-Rowe through her role as Writer in Residence with ReCITE. Mandy Redvers-Rowe is an Edinburgh TV Festival-nominated Disabled writer and theatre-maker whose work centers on social engagement and stories from underrepresented communities.
ReCITE (Building Research by Communities to Address Inequities Through Expression) is a pioneering project exploring how storytelling, creativity and community-led approaches can help address health inequities across the Liverpool City Region. The project research is led by Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and Writing on the Wall is the Lead Creative Organisation.
Mandy was based in Aintree Hospital’s Emergency Department, working alongside the Community Innovation Team (CIT), which supports high-intensity users (people who attend the department five or more times within a 12-month period). The CIT chose to focus on this group because frequent attenders often have complex social, emotional and health needs that emergency care alone cannot address.
Mandy’s role was to use creative writing and storytelling to engage with people whose lives were often shaped by complex social challenges, including poverty, trauma, poor mental health, isolation and housing insecurity.
As Mandy spent time in the hospital, it became increasingly clear that homelessness was a significant issue affecting many of the people attending A&E. For some, the reasons behind repeated hospital visits were connected not only to physical health but also to wider social circumstances, including insecure housing and homelessness.
In response, Mandy began spending part of her residency at The Whitechapel Centre in Liverpool, one of the region’s leading organisations supporting people experiencing homelessness. Working across both the hospital and the Whitechapel Centre allowed her to better understand the connections between homelessness, health and access to support services.
Through workshops, conversations and creative activities, Mandy worked with people accessing Whitechapel’s services, creating opportunities for them to share their experiences and tell their stories in their own words. These conversations revealed not only the challenges of homelessness, but also the resilience, humour, creativity and determination of the people living through it.
This podcast grew from those encounters. Through personal stories, reflections and conversations with people who have lived experience of homelessness, alongside staff working on the frontline of support services, Words from the Whitechapel explores the realities of homelessness and the issues people face when trying to rebuild their lives.
At its heart, the project is about listening. By creating space for stories to be told and heard, it aims to challenge assumptions, foster understanding and ensure that the voices of people experiencing homelessness are part of the conversations that affect them.
ReCITE is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), part of UK Research and Innovation.
