A very community Christmas
Christmas 2024 at Museum of Homelessness was a bumper edition. Having trialled a community Christmas in 2023 whilst the museum was still a building site (see images below) we felt we could flex our Festive organising skills and go all out this year.
For 2024 therefore, having completed the first phase of site works in the year, we decided to run:
Christmas Eve open house followed by the great veg peel, which was a brilliant day with the museum packed out and friends dropping by all day with gifts, donations and cheer.
Christmas Day extravaganza with posh gazebo, free tombola and Christmas dinner with all the trimmings, beef, turkey, vegan roast, pigs in blankets, vegan pigs, roasties, parsnips, carrots, spiced red cabbage, peas and gravy.
Last year we served 30 folks and this year people streamed through the museum gates taking our total guests to more than 60
If you have seen how tiny the museum kitchen is you will know that is no mean feat. Luckily we had an excellent crew to help problem solve. Here you can see our Dying Homeless Project Strategic lead Gill Taylor with the Turkey crown which she cooked at home for us and brought up the hill.
Everyone pitched in and made it happen and seconds and thirds were enjoyed by all.
We were delighted to be visited by the Simon Community, our family, who have been doing community Christmas since the 1960s. We were even more delighted when both Chelsea and Alan gave the dinner top marks.
By the end of the day the crew who had been on since the morning were pretty much frazzled but then all the guests got involved and cleared up and put away the tables, chairs, gazebo and decorations without being asked. The spirit of Christmas indeed ❤️
It was then time to close the museum until the next morning
Our first ever Boxing Day brunch consisted of everything we had left which was:
Hot panettone, Romanian bread, cammembert with garlic bread, crisps, chocolate, sweets and of course mince pies. With lots of strong coffee.
The boxing day crowd gave great vibes and then everyone helped clean the museum until it was all shiny and sparkling ready for 2025.
We end the festive season very grateful for the community that we are all a part of and how we show up for each other.
Before Christmas we wrote about the importance of nurturing the kind of love that gets you through hard times and that feels never more evident than on MoH's site in Finsbury Park.
We believe that we need to build community not services and community Christmas is a shining example of that.
We are taking some respite next week and giving the whole MoH crew the week off, before embarking on our collective adventures for 2025. The first community day of 2025 will be the 7th January.
We wish everyone a very happy new year and huge thanks and love to everyone who has made such a beautiful 2024 possible.