A very warm welcome to my new website and to this blog.
People often ask me what I do, and it’s quite hard to explain, as I do lots of different things and am interested by a range of issues. Housing and community link much of what I do, which in my opinion is at the heart of a civilised society. Trying to make housing interesting for some, however, can be a bit of a challenge but the subject can be brought to life by people’s stories, and through novels, biographies, film, poetry, art and photography as well as great architecture and design, adding creativity and meaning. I am interested in how housing makes us ‘feel’. Watching Cathy Come Home 50 years on, listening to a song, reading a tenant’s poem, or laughing at a too-close-to-home comedy sketch, can have an enormous impact on our education and learning.
I hope through this website to combine housing with the humanities and to write in the future about books and films featuring housing (have you read Margaret Forster’s My Life in Houses, or Bill Bryson’s At Home?), to comment on art and poetry and to add to my stock of housing photographs, which I hope you will enjoy looking at.
Please do get in touch and let me know what has inspired you around housing!
With best wishes, Jill
