Shelter

For our next project we were assigned to create a poster for the homeless charity "Shelter" for a bus shell . I researched homeless statistics not only for UK but worldwide and different charities such as, Oxfam, Centre Point, Emmaus and many more. This project was a real eye opener to see the importance of what goes on around you everyday. I came across loads of upsetting images of adults, children and old people and made me realize that yes, it could really be me or my parents, grandparents,siblings, nieces and nephews. Reality really hit me!

For my final pieces I wanted to show a lot of feeling through them, not necessarily by giving it the 'shock' emotion, but I wanted it to touch peoples heart and be one of them posters that  will make you, take a double look. I thought of how to pursue this and came up with including children; a face of a child as children always touch peoples hearts by being so young, clueless and innocent. Seeing a homeless child and a child being uncared for immediately touches my heart one way or another . I drew out a sketch of a little girl in rundown clothes, head down, holding a teddy bear (signifying a child) and a penny box; standing outside a window shop during christmas. I wanted to give it a Christmas theme as it is the most warm,loving season of the year where everyone is with their loved ones and friends and eating good food, sharing presents; really just a happy time of the year. So having a poster of a child during christmas alone in the cold, I believed it would be ideal for my final piece. After  receiving feedback for my tutors, I realized that the image just said "Poverty" instead of "homeless"by the way I structured it. I was then stuck, because I just personally thought that they were both the same! 


In the end I just threw myself into it. A friend of mine and I went for a stroll round Bournemouth see if we can find any homeless people. Funny enough, we found ONE! Our plan was to approach them and speak to them and maybe give them some food or money or whatever they preferred in exchange for their time. But this one in particular didn't seem like he was in a good mood. We tried to take some pictures on the sly, although we felt bad because I felt like I was just simply taking the piss, as if I was taking pictures of a statue. But the deed was done and I managed to take a few good shots. The guilt was eating me up so after a while we returned to give him some food and money but by the time we went back he was gone. 

After going through the pictures I just imported them into photoshop and started playing around with them... I always loved the quote by Ghandi "Be the change you want to see in the world", so I definitely wanted to use that within my final pieces. Within my poster I wanted to show how corrupt the world is and that homelessness is everywhere! So at first I came up with the image below

I liked it! but it just didn't say "homeless people". I wanted to include the pictures that I took but I also liked what I did with this one, with the world being cracked as if to say corrupted and the red not only symbolizing 'Shelter' but I just thought of, danger, alert, blood etc. So I decided to use my picture as a background image and fade it out . 

Perfect! But then I needed a second piece. So decided to play around with them a bit and in the end came out with 3 final pieces, using 2 of them as a choice of leaflets and one Final Poster. 

Final Poster

Leaflet 1 

Leaflet 2