The Homelessness Tepee

National Youth Homelessness Matters Day was on 14/04/10. The Youth Coalition were planning a day of activities, based in Garema Place Civic, to raise the public’s awareness about youth homelessness and to celebrate the resilience of young people who are experiencing homelessness in Australia. The aims were to reflect the fact that youth homelessness affects a range of young people in different circumstances and for different reasons, to highlight the Australian Government’s current commitment to reduce homelessness and to remind the community that homelessness is ‘everyone’s responsibility’.

At a Coalition meeting 6 weeks prior to the event, the events Manager called for volunteers to coordinate an arts based project, as the planned project with another organization had been cancelled. A component of the LIFT Projects’ service agreement is to run programs involving young people at risk of, or experiencing homelessness, so I put up my hand to coordinate the making of a felt tepee.  This project involved contacting the young people accessing homelessness services in the ACT who were residing in youth refuges. The LIFT Project visited the participating refuges 3 times each.  The first to discuss the project, to provide a demonstration of feltmaking and the young people made their own sample pieces of felt. The next session involved the brainstorming of ideas for designs to be incorporated into their panel of the tepee. The third session was the actual making of the panels. This was mostly evening work as the young people were available at these times.

The panels were made by Lowana Young Womens Refuge, Oasis Refuge, Canberra Youth Refuge and Barnardos Transition Program, Tumladden Refuge, St Vincent de Paul (the LIFT Young Mums Craft Group) and the last panel was made for the Galilee LIFT Project.

The creativity and input provided by the participants was inspiring to say the least. These young people showed commitment, courage and strength, though they are dealing with a range of issues relating to homelessness. The panels all express their feelings about homelessness and feature cut out houses, family homes, keys and stark messages such as “homelessness sucks”.

As the coordinator I found the project physically exhausting, it consumed my thoughts both at work and at home for a number of weeks but the actual erecting of the tepee on the day was a major highlight. It is a community development project for everyone involved to be proud of.

The tepee will be stored at the LIFT building and is available for loan by the organizations and young people involved in its creation and other groups who work with or advocate for homeless youth. Minister for Housing Joy Birch was keen for the Assembly to showcase the tepee as a display in the foyer of the Assembly. 

The LIFT Project would like to thank the Youth refuges and the young people involved, DHCS for funding the project, Lions Youth Haven, who allowed the use of their community hall for much of the process and Peter (from the Galilee School) who constructed the Tepee frame and helped to set up on the day. Peter and Ben (from the school) also played music and sang for the event.