Bedrooms of London
We’re very proud to have played a part in the powerful and important Bedrooms of London exhibition, currently on display at The Foundling Museum. The outcome of two years’ engagement with families by The Childhood Trust, the exhibition of photographs by Katie Wilson takes us inside the bedrooms of London children living in poverty. Or at least, the spaces they sleep in, since the families’ other needs - cooking, washing, working, playing - very often occupy the same space, depriving these children of the calm and privacy that they desperately need growing up.
Wilson’s photographs document the incredibly difficult living conditions of 30 families, one for each London borough. There are no people in the images, so the environments they live in speak for the challenges they face and the compromises they’re forced to make. The Childhood Trust say 700,000 children are currently living below the poverty line in the capital, and the report they published alongside the exhibition lays out the impossible situations faced by many low-income families caused by uncompassionate, profit-driven housing policies of recent years.
Wanting to make some of the report’s findings more accessible to exhibition visitors, The Foundling Museum contacted Scriberia and asked us to create a large-scale wall illustration highlighting some of the key facts. Having digested the report, co-founder Dan sketched a first draft of the graphic which was shared with The Childhood Trust. After a few tweaks to content, Lauren took charge of the final artwork and did a fantastic job of balancing a breezy, cartoon style with the seriousness of the subject matter. As we found previously with our work for Action for Children, it’s an approach that has the power to prompt real empathy and engagement in the viewer.
“Scriberia brilliantly distilled the complexities and consequences of the housing crisis into one engaging and easy to understand illustration. What they produced is perfect for the Instagram generation who want to understand what’s happening and why from an informed source without having to digest a 72 page report. Thank you Scriberia, you made the exceedingly complex brilliantly simple.”