An interactive journey with storytelling buskers, following the lives of Tash and Steve; two individuals from Stoke-on-Trent who experienced homelessness and rough sleeping in their struggle to survive. Exposing the myths around rough sleeping we look at the real life stories of the people and professionals involved.  Asking our audience to identify ways to improve the journey from street to home. Why does Steve live in his car? How can Tash get a house?

VOICES are proud to have commissioned Stoke-on-Trent based arts organisations B-Arts and Rideout to coproduce an interactive promenade style production, based on real lived experiences, to explore and dispel the myths and fallacies often associated with homelessness and rough sleeping.

As part of our work here at VOICES we seek to empower people experiencing multiple needs (combinations of homelessness, mental ill health, addiction and offending) to make changes to improve their lives, and to influence services to be the best that they can be to ensure the right support is available to everyone, if and when its needed. To enable this to happen work needs to be done to understand the drivers behind the barriers people experience. Telling the real stories of real people is central to achieving this; we all have preconceived ideas of how things work (or perhaps how they should work) but only when we come face to face with things is the true reality revealed.

In Plain Sight is a promenade performance, featuring live music, projections and food, which we hope attendees will both enjoy and be moved by – Through talking about these issues as a community we can, and will, move forwards to solutions that benefit everyone in our great city.

This piece of work has been commissioned through the VOICES citywide learning programme, which is made possible with funding from The National Lottery Community Fund.

“Coproduction is at the core of the VOICES learning programme that aims to raise awareness of barriers and challenges that people face.  At the same time, we promote positive practice in order that new and creative ways of working can be shared across the city.  Throughout 2019 demand was high for bespoke workshops that we have delivered to a range of local and national services   These all involved people with lived experiences in the design, delivery and evaluation stages. Feedback from professionals has been overwhelmingly positive with many describing that, listening to an actual persons’ real experiences enhances their insight and knowledge.  These are key drivers for change.  Let’s make change together”.

Sharon Sharman, Learning and Evaluation Manager  – VOICES

Tickets are available from: inplainsight.brownpapertickets.com

Performances talking place on:

February 5th, 6th, 7th & 8th starting at 7.30pm

February 12th, 13th, 14th & 15th starting at 7.30pm

(Wrap up warm and wear sturdy shoes as it takes place in an old factory)

Suitable for ages 16+ contains adult themes and language.

#inplainsight2020