Housing Distress
The film set out to explore the cumulative impacts of living in temporary accommodation on the body and psyche. It was a co-produced film, which emerged from years of collaborative research by Nikita Simpson, Elizabeth Storer and Suad Duale with a group of British Somali mothers, who were organising against evictions within the private and social housing sector in Birmingham. Participants invited the research team to make a film, which was based in the Small Heath youth centre which served as the centre of their organising. Through the biography of Faiza, a radio presenter and driving instructor, the film illuminates forms of distress hidden in blunt biomedical and legal categories. In the context of this research, it sought to offer a situated perspective of housing related distress at the margins of UK cities.