My mother always told me that child poverty didn’t exist, dressed in rags from a charity shop.
For me, this year’s Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo is appropriately named Journeys, and its spectacle left me considering my own and the roads we take through life.
Before travelling to Edinburgh Castle, where the Tattoo is held, John Swinney, the First Minister of Scotland and his team welcomed us to Bute House, the First Minister’s official residence: an honour and a privilege.
The previous week, Heavy Sound and I, along with other organisations supporting young people, were invited to be the Salute Taker’s guests for the evening. However, upon initially receiving our invitation, my colleague remarked, “What’s interesting, though, is that there are more children homeless in Scotland than the number of people in the stands when full!” …
I saw the Tattoo as a child, and even though the cheapest seats were expensive, my dad insisted that everyone should see it at least once.
So, on a traditionally chilly August evening in 1994, we reached the summit of the Royal Mile and marched on Castle Hill like a swarm of legions. The air flickered before fire and lights as the skies darkened behind the black castle. Our ranks closed in the cobbled bottleneck, pressing me further into the crush but distracting me from wondering how the homeless people who blanketed in doorways came to be there. Bagpipes slashed through the gusting wind, falling higher and lower, as organ-shaking drums beat the rain into six-tail-whips twice as it fell, causing my heart to pound harder than usual. But this was different, tribal—some archaic, primitive sense of my identity and morality compared to the confusion and unsafety I’d so often felt by age eight.
Upon reflection, my colleague’s comment had been a personal and purposefully placed incendiary, intended to provoke a reaction, knowing I first began experiencing homelessness as a teenager, and the challenges Heavy Sound’s groups face.
This time, the Tattoo was different; aged thirty-eight, I watched the crowds from behind the tinted windows of a chauffeur-driven minibus as we followed the First Minister’s car through armoured roadblocks. The pipes and drums still beat outside, but inside, I demonstrated my word-for-word knowledge of Eminem’s explicit lyrics to ’Without Me’, which played on the radio, to mixed reception. The atmosphere and lights beyond our neon, leather-clad cabin were different, too; the nostalgia surrounding them was edged like a razor with the weariness of journeys.
Before Heavy Sound, I somehow managed to navigate almost fifteen years of recurring homelessness. I found myself on the other side of it, having slipped through school and every other net, eventually emerging with little education, few qualifications, and no skills or desire to enter society or the world of employment. Then, something happens, and you’re on a new road, a new journey, heading for another destination… If you’re lucky.
Heavy Sound was founded in 2015, and since then, I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of many people’s journeys. Although initially brought together through trauma, we often part company, having healed a little. But it’s a long journey, and some don’t make it.
The minibus stopped at another roadblock on a steep cobbled lane at the top of Castle Hill, and we descended onto the flagstone sidewalk outside the Camera Obscura to the din of battle. The legions with their flags, pipes and drums poured up the cobbled hill, and I swelled with pride. Despite being only sixteen, the children accompanying us had already taken a long, hard road to get here.
Sitting in the front row of the Royal Box facing the Castle, I looked out across the stands, counting the faceless faces I recognised; then, turning to the people on my right, I asked. “Dae ye ken how many bairns are homeless in Scotland the noo?”. But they only responded with silent, weary faces, so I continued. “Mair than these stands hud when they’re foo!”. And then I watched them count the faceless faces they also knew.
The stands of the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo hold up to 8,800 people.
There are currently 9,860 homeless children in Scotland.
As an organisation whose youth services offer an alternative to school, providing person-centric education and Scottish National Qualifications, this figure is the equivalent of 423 classrooms of children based on the government’s national average of 23.3 children per class.
More than 90% of people Heavy Sound has built relationships with since 2015 have experienced homelessness, but we are NOT a homelessness organisation.
We have trusted relationships with many people experiencing homelessness, and through recently witnessing an increase in inappropriate housing and homelessness locally, we have successfully used the legal system to support public and statutory services to provide appropriate housing for children, forcing us to adapt in the face of a growing issue.
However, despite this, we continue to face significant challenges in a complex, uncertain financial climate. We must often help or continue to support individuals and families without funding or procurement, stretching ourselves further.
Research carried out by Glasgow Caledonian University into our developing model in 2018 and 2019 helped us prove that short-term “interventions” for people living with trauma and broken attachment are not sustainable. These interventions, or projects, often offer a ray of hope and are attached to the blossoming of a positive relationship, which is then taken away.
Therefore, when the funding ends, or the payments stop, we can’t break what are often the only attachments our groups have, especially without adequate safety planning or destinations ahead. It’s a complicated model, but sustained, secure attachments should not be broken, particularly for those with none.
