Reimagining Home update – on tv and moving ahead

I hope you’re well and thriving in this complex and confusing world.

As an older single woman who has experienced poverty, housing stress and homelessness I get asked to speak about this issue a lot.

As an introvert, that’s not always an energising experience but it’s important to speak up and out about this growing crisis.

I worked unpaid for years to research what I called Reimagining Home. In 2020, Shelter WA, Connect Vic Park and Lisa Baker MLA Maylands provided some support to create the 3 documents you can download here

Older Single Women at risk of homelessness – Invisible silent and well behaved – no more

I created a Reimagining Home framework and 4 Building Blocks Process that can be used as a tool for collaboratively codesigning diverse options for home.

I was invited to be part of an SBS doco on ageing that aired this week. The producers used my Reimagining Home research and documents to build the segment and they asked me to facilitate the session.

5 hours of filming was edited down to around 5 or so minutes and I was pleased with the result. You can view the whole doco on SBS on demand. It’s called ‘What do Australians think about … Ageing and older people’

my dream? I’d love to get funding to edit the 5 hours of raw footage and add in examples of collaborative housing developments that include older single women as codesigners. A film that highlights the complexity of the issue AND shows that if we leverage our different assets and strengths we can create great solutions so that older single women can age well and continue to contribute to their communities

My hope for the doco is that it raises awareness of my tribe that tends to be invisible, silent and well behaved.

Not me!

And in other great news – Connect Victoria Park and I received a small grant from the WA Department of Communities to move Reimagining Home from Research to Engage and a little Design.

Over the next 10 months I’ll get paid a day a month [and also do more unpaid] to create 4 workshops to bring together older women and lots of different stakeholders to collaboratively explore, understand and even codesign options for home so older women on low incomes can age well in their communities of choice

Here’s a hand drawn image from one of my Reimagining Home documents – the visual summary. These are the groups of people I’ll be talking with over the next few months to see if they want to come play with Reimagining Home.

Connect Vic Park https://www.connectvictoriapark.org/ – are a community housing provider in Vic Park who provide accommodation to older people on low incomes. They also run the Village Hub that is older people run and is bloody brilliant.

And finally, my fab brother Marc helped design the branding for Reimagining Home