No. 4 July 2009. Newsletter Welcome HomeLess
Welcome HomeLess is expanding 
The secrets of a sculptor
The workshop of the sculptor Jens Galschiøt is buzzing with activity. This morning the rays of sunshine light up the large workshop and unveil the many different sculptures, figures, things and stuff, which are placed on the many racks and on the floor. There are many people here this morning crossing through the workshop, chatting and laughing to each other or just sitting immersed in their work.
Jens Galschiøt is a busy man and besides the sculptures for Welcome HomeLess he is working on a few other projects – mainly in relation to the up-coming United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009. But right now he is working on a new sculpture portraying a homeless man.The homeless man is lying on a pallet, resting his head on a bag filled with newspaper and partly covered with a blanket. There is still a long way to go before this sculpture is done and ready to be exhibited in streets and squares.
“All the sculptures are made of wax at first. I model the man naked, so that every body part is made right, and the head and hands are often made separately, because normally they aren’t covered in clothing” says Jens Galschiøt and picks up a hand from the pallet. “The hands and the head are often covered in cobber and bronze first, and afterwards when they are attached to the body, I dress him in the clothes that he is going to wear and cover them with wax, or I model the clothes as I want them to be” he says.
A detailed process
In one side of the large workshop two huge basins take up most of the space. They are filled with dissolved copper and bronze with a little titanium. The process that the sculptor uses to make his bronze sculptors is very special.
“It is called electroplating. When I lower the wax body into the basin, the wax is covered with a electrolytic coat consisting of mainly cobber, and during the time the sculpture is placed in the basin, the electroplating process makes the dissolved metal wander to the figure and slowly place a layer of metal on the wax body” Jens Galschiøt explains.
When the sculpture has spent enough time in the basin, it is pulled up from the basin and the wax is then burned out of the metal coating. This leaves the sculpture hollow. Then a process of cleaning, polishing and hardening follows before the sculpture is filled with concrete, so that nobody can run off with it.
However, for now the homeless man with the blanket will be lying on the pallet next to a large rack away from the rays of sun in the workshop. He will be lying there waiting for a dip in the basin before he can join the rest of the sculptures of Welcome HomeLess.
For more pictures of the new sculpture, please visit Jens Galschiøt’s website.
A student in Social Work - Sara - helped us make a life story for each of the sculptures made so far based on the lives of foreign homeless people in Copenhagen. They are all posted at the Welcome HomeLess website, just click here and say Hello to Less, Eva or Alexandr.
Valuable and committed support
Now that we have entered a new phase of Welcome HomeLess, and now that we have introduced you to the New Welcome HomeLess in our last newsletter (June issue), we would like to introduce you to our new partners.
The team behind Welcome HomeLess has expanded, because we believe that more committed people will bring positive results, and make sure that the touring exhibition will be a success.
The two Danish partner NGOs are Missionen blandt Hjemløse (The Mission among Homeless) and SAND (The Danish National Organisation for Homeless people).
An important project
Missionen blandt Hjemløse is proud to join Welcome HomeLess.
“Homelessness is by nature not connected to a place, a city or even a nation. Homeless people cannot go ‘home’ ” says Jacob Ørum, Head of Communication at Missionen.
“The dual aim of Welcome HomeLess to both secure focus on the European Year for Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion and to remind us that there are people among us with no place to call home, often without rights or access to the most basic of social security, are both very important. We hope that Jens Galschiøts’ art will help promote a pan-European debate on homelessness and look forward to collaborating with projekt UDENFOR and SAND.”
Secretariat Director in SAND Ask Svejstrup agrees with Jacob Ørum, and believes Welcome HomeLess to be a great and interesting way of challenging the European citizens’ view of homelessness.
“SAND’s board consists solely of users and we know how important it is to give the homeless and former homeless people a voice. By using sculptures of homeless people and exhibit them in streets and squares, we present homelessness in a different and present way that will make people stop and consider the fact that there is homelessness in Europe” says Ask Svejstrup.
Both Missionen blandt Hjemløse and SAND will contribute actively in the process of finding relevant funding for the touring exhibition, and help Welcome HomeLess come alive.
Read more about Missionen blandt Hjemløse and SAND here.
Missionen blandt Hjemløse was founded in 1893 and is today a private social foundation. The NGO is running shelters, homes and social cafés for homeless, addicts and the mentally ill. The main goals of the organisation are to prevent social marginalisation, provide help to homeless people and other marginalised individuals and to enhance public understanding about these issues.
SAND is a user organisation for the homeless or the former homeless in Denmark. The organisation speaks the case of those who otherwise have nobody to speak their case.
SAND provides a social and political platform for marginalised people, and actively supports the establishment of tenants’ councils in all hostels for the homeless.
“Necessity is the mother of invention”
The team behind Welcome HomeLess is fully aware that all the NGOs that are interested in being a part of the touring exhibition are valuable to the exhibition. But an Irish NGO are being more than just interested and open towards the project – they have begun their own ‘hunt’ for funding.
As we wrote in the June issue of the Welcome HomeLess Newsletter it is still uncertain how much funding and sponsoring we can find to cover the costs of the pan-European touring exhibition. We are still doing our best to find funding, but if your NGO is just as interested in hosting the exhibition as the Irish NGO, you are more than welcome to help us find the money for transport.
In relation to the EU Year 2010 for Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion it is possible to apply for funding for national projects. This means that you can apply for money to host the Welcome HomeLess exhibition in your country along with your own events, debates and so on, which voice the EU Year 2010. If you are interested in this, please contact Communications Officer Charlotta Odlind in FEANTSA for further details on how to apply.
FEANTSA has recently informed us that from a European level approximately half of all member state national programmes have been sent to the European Commission and will be reviewed in the next few weeks. However, calls for tender will not go out in the member states until later in the autumn.
If your national programme hasn’t been sent off to the European Commission yet, it might be possible for you to apply for financial support for hosting Welcome HomeLess.
Short News:
Wonderful tourism
A large and important part of Welcome HomeLess is visibility and reaching out to the citizens of Europe. The sculptures will be placed in streets and squares around Europe to focus attention on homelessness, and the best way for Welcome HomeLess and our NGO partners to make sure that all the sculptures are placed in the right spots is to ask the right people.
The Danish official convention, event and visitors bureau of the Greater Copenhagen area Wonderful Copenhagen has been a competent sparring partner throughout the last ten months. Our contact person Peter Rømer has given us great inputs regarding the tourist related angle on Welcome HomeLess, and June 15th – 20th he presented the pan-European touring exhibition to tourist organisations from 132 major cities in 32 European countries.
The presentation took place at the European Cities Marketing’s Annual Conference and Assembly in Gothenburg, Sweden. The point was to inform the European network of the exhibition. We wanted to encourage them to be a part of the project too, in order to help all participating NGOs with information about their cities tourism, and to support the NGOs by producing materials about the exhibition in a local and national perspective.
The Conference and Assembly in Gothenburg was called “Events and Meetings in the City”, and Welcome HomeLess is an exhibition that aims at gathering citizens around the sculptures and creating debates in both a local, national and international level.
The interest in helping the local NGOs carry out the Welcome HomeLess exhibition was large, and if your NGO is interested in getting a helping hand in the planning and carrying out of the exhibition, we strongly encourage you to contact your local tourist organisation.
You can find a link to the European Cities Marketing Member list here.
Read more here…
A helping hand?
As you might have noticed, Welcome HomeLess is growing at the moment. We are trying to gather as much competent knowledge concerning art, philanthropy, open-air exhibitions and of course homelessness.
During the last few weeks, we have tried to get in contact with the Danish art museum ARoS in Aarhus, because we believe that the museum can contribute with important information and perhaps introduce Welcome HomeLess to a large network of art interested people, other museums and art auction houses.
The ARoS art museum spans ten levels and shows its own extensive collection of 1100 paintings, 400 sculptures and installations, 200 art videos and over 7,000 drawings, photos and graphics: a collection that ahead of the inauguration was enhanced by the addition of works by international artists such as Bill Viola, Tony Oursler, Carsten Höller, Miwa Yanagi and James Turrell.
The Museum is not able to donate any money for Welcome HomeLess, but hopefully they will be interested in a potential partnership. We will of course keep you up-dated on this too.
We wish you a nice weekend and kind regards,
The team behind Welcome HomeLess.
You are always more that welcome to contact us at: welcome@udenfor.dk and please visit www.welcomehomeless.org