Bricks was part of the collective work “Me and My Community” under Skaped. During this project, each of our participants were given disposable cameras to develop their own photographic projects based on the theme of “community”.
This project explores the stigmatisation of social housing and the rise of obnoxious stereotypes around the social housing tenants as lazy scroungers, particularly after the Grenfell Tower. I wanted to fight these stereotypes using the borough of Tower Hamlets in East London, an area which has gone through a lot of gentrification in the past few years. This process of gentrification impacted the community as the council-owned housing
in Tower Hamlets fell from 82% in 1981 to just 12% in 2011.
I believe that there is a link between the social housing stigma and the process of gentrification, and I wanted to bring awareness to this. I decided to interview and photograph four individuals who live in social housing in East London. Each participant shared their best memory and acknowledged the ‘shame’ that as a society we have placed on individuals who are social housing residents.
I hope this project will be the start of a debate on social housing, the working-class, and gentrification.
Humanistics 