Remembering Anton wallich-Clifford on World Homeless Day

Anton Wallich-Clifford, courtesy of Dunk Gray.

This World Homeless Day we remember Anton Wallich-Clifford who set up the Simon Community in 1963, which is still operating today from it’s London house at 129 Malden Road.

Anton had a vision of a community movement offering a radical alternative to institutional care and government provision, with homeless people and people without that experience, living and working co-equally.

Living Room at St Joe’s, 129 Malden Road. Courtesy of the Simon Community Archive and MT Gibson-Watt

The Simon Community led to communities in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Ireland and all over England. Many of the large homelessness charities you know today - St Mungos, Centrepoint, Cyrenians, the Wallich were set up by Simon workers and volunteers.

This is also Museum of Homelessness' lineage, through our co-founder Jess’s parents Jane Rothery and Fred Josef who were inspired by Anton to set up a community in his name in Cardiff, the Wallich-Clifford Community.

At Museum of Homelessness, we try and live those original community principles from the 1960s in our work today. That is why we have a lot of group work, a therapeutic focus, a flattened hierarchy, equal pay for all, a tendency to build our own things from scratch and renovate unloved sites, a tendency to work on the streets and a lot of lived experience driving the organisation but a respect for learned experience too. Our work is grounded in building communities based upon love and mutual care.

Its all taken from what actually worked in homelessness history and what we can learn from those who led the way before.

Thank you to Anton and the other movement pioneers of the 60s, including his widow MT Gibson-Watt pictured here, who gave us the toolkit for our work today. ❤️

Anton Wallich-Clifford and MT Gibson-Watt, courtesy of The Simon Community Archive.