Tours through a homeless past

 

 

Our film addressed a visual side of homelessness, showing clearly a very personalized account of one individual life as a homeless person. For example where you would sleep, where you would buy drugs, how you would earn money and where you would congregate with other homeless people. It was especially interesting for us to compare commonly known areas of the city to Jan’s oral account of a darker history, for example at the monastery park walls still displayed to signs of drug use. While it addressed an individual’s interaction with an urban environment, he also indirectly conveyed how an individual is affected by government policy and changing attitudes towards social problems. Jan’s story offered us a unique and important insight to the recent past where the social environment was drastically different than the one we’re living in today. This is a conscious goal of Utrecht Underground, the company in which Jan is involved. And in this context the stories we have preserved can be viewed as cultural preservation, as we elaborated on in our academic report.