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A day out – People’s Responses

| whatshometoyou

As part of the Home Is… project, a few members of our team – Iman, Fedor and Fareed, spent a day out in Bristol’s Barton Hill area to ask people what Home means to them. Here are a few responses (names have been kept anonymous unless permission has been granted)

Response 1:

Home: we just wanted to know what you think of the word ‘home’?

Anon: ‘Home’ springs to mind somewhere I can go to relax after a long day at work. Whether to chill out with my family or be on my own.

And do you consider home to be a place?

Uh, home is more so the people rather than just the place. A place of bricks and mortar. Home is where your family is.

Is there anything else that you might think of when you think of home?

Uh, again, just relaxing.

Just relaxing? Have you lived anywhere else or have you travelled?

I’ve lived in many places, but there would be only a small amount of places I would call home. Or what would be home. Umm, where I am at the moment, again at home with my family, that I call a home again. Because again, it’s only bricks and mortar but that is my home where I feel relaxed after a day’s work, I chill out, and again probably the place where I grew up and was born is where I would call home as well.

Response 2:

Home: Would you say your home is where you’re from?

Anon: No – its where I live.

So would you say the house you’re living in now is your home?

Yeah, because it is.

And you said earlier that home is where your family is – would you like to talk about that a bit

No.

Response 3:

Home: What is home to you?

Dan: Uhm, to me home is where I feel most comfortable, where I feel I kinda belong. Doesn’t necessarily have to be a place

Sian: I think that home is a place where yeah you feel most comfortable with people who mean a lot to you, not necessarily family, and it doesn’t necessarily need to be your family home, but yeah

Response 4:

Home: What do you think home means to you then?

Fra: I don’t think its specific to where you’re from – I think it’s where you feel at home. I come from somewhere else, it’s not very far away, but Bristol’s my home. I wasn’t born here but it feels like home, so I guess what feels like home is home yeah.

Response 5:

Home: What do you think home is to you?

Anon: Home is where I feel most comfortable in, which I suppose would be my corner sofa. I live in a shared house so I don’t use the lounge much but I spend a lot of time on my corner sofa, it’s good for having people round and its just coffee table and my candles there, it just makes it – nice lighting – makes it nice and homely, yeah. Big step getting a corner sofa. Wanted one for years but I finally moved into a room big enough to accommodate. Yeah. That’s where I feel at home and regularly fall asleep on it.

An abstract phenomenon

| whatshometoyou

Home in the physical sense, is an abstract phenomenon to the displaced, for the physical roots never had the opportunity to dig deep. Instead, home is something your search for through each other.

My family have been displaced twice by the Turks, one generation during the 1915 Armenian Genocide causing them to uproot to Cyprus, only for the next generation to be forced out again during 1974 Turkish Cypriot invasion, and thus replanted themselves in the UK. Despite the inescapable uncertainty of their futures, the complete unfamiliarity in their new surroundings, the anxieties about providing for their children, finding home in each other is precisely how my grandparents managed to pull through.

They faced these big problems together while sharing the same culture and pain from the past, helping them to not to feel alone. They also found mechanisms to preserve their natural selves and Armenian identities through sharing memories, discussing literature and history, listening to music and enriching us with these experiences and sense of identity.

Home to them is genuine connection. To trust and be understood by someone you love, to express your identity naturally with no fear, to go forward in life knowing you have someone fighting the battle with you.

This philosophy of ‘home’ remained with me when I entered foster care . Although from completely different worlds, my foster parents and I managed to bond through showing a level of care, understanding and building trust. My idea of home began to expand on to the rugby pitch (my foster parents played rugby and finally got me into it), where 15 women put their bodies on the line for each other to fight for a common goal. From the crimson joy I feel in my heart when I see my girlfriend at the airport and hug tightly silently, knowing we’re finally back together. When walking into a middle eastern coffee shop with patterned carpets, that instantly reminds me of my grandparents house and of all the wealth of knowledge and virtues they taught me.

Sirvart Sarafian

Being content

| whatshometoyou

When I have my family over to visit me or when i’m around them I feel like home. Especially with my mother and sister. When I visit a place or eat a home cooked meal that brings back fond childhood memories, that is home to me.

When i get a call from my friends and family knowing that they have my back,
simply being around Family, close (real) friends, feeling stable, happy, feeling like myself but most importantly being content, that’s what home is for me. The feeling that I belong— where ever that may be.

You can travel the world, with your home right in your heart.

Noha Sharraf

The body

| whatshometoyou

The body is home for me, it is not only the physical agent of the structures of everyday experience. It is the producer of dreams, the transmitter and receiver of cultural messages, a creature of habits, a desiring machine, a repository of memories, an actor in the theater of power, a tissue of affects and feelings. The body is home as well as a vessel.

Satadru Sovan Banduri, Fulbright Scholar From DANM, California, Multi-disciplinary Artist from Delhi.

Family

| whatshometoyou

This picture sums up what home means to me. It’s not about a building it’s about FAMILY. Family doesn’t also mean blood relative. In this picture I have both my parents and my brother. The rest are not blood related but I would care for them like they were my family. Home means to me what family means to most people. That’s what I would say my home is. My home is a big place as all over the country. I would love to expand my home to all over the world.

Wayne Wilson

Chaos and calm

| whatshometoyou

Home is… chaos, and calm. It’s a comfort zone.

Home is where you come back to, on good days and bad. It’s the people you hold close to you, and a few items that are more than familiar.

Home is supportive, home gives you a platform to leap off of, and land safely in.

Home is anywhere, everywhere, no where, and only here.

Home is cuddled up on the sofa, thinking about the next adventure. It’s a place to think, to stop, to regroup, before going again.

Home is a feeling, a geographical location, it’s a safety, it’s a willingness and wanting and a comfort zone.
Home changes, like a comfort zone, it grows and shrinks, it’s fixed and flexible. It’s where you feel at home.

Sam Rose (via Instagram)

Spaces and memories that have interlocked over time

| whatshometoyou

Homes to me, are spaces and memories that have interlocked over time. Not holidays, sleep-overs or hedges you have woken up in. But places of short- or long-term permanence in your life, where you interact with the surrounding environment.

So home becomes a player in a sort of one to one scale map, but with most of the information missing. The house next door you have never been in, but you’ve seen their garden from your window. So home sits in a giant jigsaw of your own or shared experiences.

Here are homes over my lifetime represented by maps of the areas. The last piece, hopefully will be the place for my next home.

By Grant Lambie