Rough sleeping is a lifestyle choice — as those words from a former Home Secretary still echo in the chambers of Westminster, I invite you to step outside and join us for a walk in Whitehall this World Homelessness Day.
If you do come with us, you’ll hear lesser-known, but no-less-incredible stories of London’s unsung heroes, told by extraordinary people such as our newest tour guide, Anne. On the stroll from Lambeth to Westminster, Anne will also share her own experiences of being homeless in the capital. Listening to and learning from a dramatic recollection such as this is not your typical tourism experience, but this is how you can be a tourist with purpose.
Solutions-led tourism is an easy – and enjoyable – way to support social and environmental causes while we travel. By choosing more ethical, impactful ways to explore the world that value sustainability and social responsibility over traditional tourism, it allows us to really get to know the people, culture and communities in the places we visit.
Our new Westminster tour brings joy, restores dignity, raises awareness and provides engaging and appealing ways of sightseeing while supporting social impact. We need to spark more conversations, which allow people to understand homelessness better while helping those who are so often marginalised in society.
It’s hard not to have empathy for vulnerable people as homelessness continues to rise – by 33% in the last year in London alone. And our tours, which combine fascinating historical stories alongside deeply personal ones, are an especially poignant way to experience our city.
I’m not here just to plug Unseen’s new walks — but remind us all we live in a time when temporary shelters and emergency funds are in extremely high demand, yet they barely reach the people who need them most. With charity support under such enormous pressure to meet short-term, life-saving relief caused by the systemic issues that turn people onto the streets as the cost-of-living crisis continues to go unaddressed, we say let’s walk and talk.
The thing is — people experiencing homelessness don’t just lack a place to call home. It often also makes it harder to maintain a job and support a family and even affects mental well-being. It makes people feel invisible and unseen. So, when we have global events like the Olympics, Royal Weddings and even political gatherings such as the G20 summit in Delhi last year, further displacing unhoused people in the places where these events occur, we must find another solution. Societies like to hide their homelessness when the world is watching. I’d like us to hear more of their stories instead.
Does it help get people curious about why there’s a statue popularly known as ‘hanging out the washing’ on Parliament Square? Is it doing good to get walkers wondering if it’s true that an 1830’s bare-knuckle boxer inspired the name for our iconic Big Ben? Will time spent learning why this clocktower rang every four minutes on 16 June 2023? I don't know — but it would be good to see more debates in Parliament about why there aren’t more impact-led tourism experiences actively providing solutions to more social challenges in our city. That’s a lifestyle choice we should all get behind.
Westminster with Anne walking tour, £18 from unseentours.org.uk
