The Unknown Voices project aims to raise public awareness of the issues facing people whose voices are rarely heard: homeless people and refugees, people with mental health problems, marginalised women, and so on. The project began in 2007 as a collaboration between the Women's Radio Group charity and creative skills teacher Paddy Gormley, in which a group of homeless women were trained to condict interviews using digital audio recorders and went on to record interviews with more than thirty male and female members of Crisis Skylight, London E1. 

Work was temporarily suspend in 2008, following the tragic death of project co-founder Julie Hill, However, Paddy Gormley continues to work with other practitioners in similar fields. Accordingly, in 2011, this website was extended to include additional audio recordings that extend the work of Unknown Voices and that will, it is hoped, give rise to further phases of the project.

Scroll down this page for further details about the oroginal project, including excerpts from a behind-the-scenes audio programme featuring the voices of everyone involved in the project. Click the links below for the other audio resources.

2007 Interviews
Art vs Rehab
Art on the Airwaves

click for recordings

Click the image above for the recordings page from the 2007 project, featuring 32 interviews with people who have experienced homelessness. The total playing time is about two hours.

Click for Art vs Rehab

Click the image above for a page of information about Art vs Rehab, a seminar to explore and provoke relationships between art and mental health. The page includes audio extracts and a summary report.

Click the image above for Face Value: Art on the Airwaves, an audio exhibition by Fabiola Franco-Palmier, in which she explores the hidden talents of members of Crisis Skylight who have experienced homelessness (23'13").
Unknown Voices 2007

 

 

On-Line
Audio Recordings

The Recordings page features 32
click-to-play audio recordings
in which men and women
speak candidly and movingly about
their experiences of homelessness

Click on the image below
for the recordings page. 

click for recordings

 

spacer

Radio Programme

A radio programme about the Unknown Voices project is now available for broadcast.  The programme includes:

  • interviews with members of the Unknown Voices team and with some of the women trained by them,
  • recordings made during the course for training purposes,
  • "behind the scenes" interviews with Richard Stevens (Fast Forward Grants), Leslie Morphy (Chief Executive, Crisis UK) and Richard Pace (Head of Crisis Skylight, London E1),
  • illustrative extracts from the Unknown Voices interviews.

The original Unknown Voices project was led by Women's Radio Group, in collaboration with Exciting Writing teacher Paddy Gormley.  The work was funded by GLE Fast Forward and hosted by Crisis Skylight, London E1. 

Click on the images on the right
for the project partners' respective websites. 

spacer

 

Women's Radio Group
GLE Fast Forward - European Social Fund
Exciting Writing
Crisis UK

Phase 1 Objectives

The pilot phase of the project, completed in February 2008, had two objectives:

  • to involve homeless and otherwise disadvantaged women in a training programme in which they could learn how to record and edit their own and other people's stories;
  • to make digital audio recordings of the stories of other, similarly disadvantaged people, men and women, for presentation in this website. 

Some of the women who completed the initial training course in 2007 continued their training with further support from Women's Radio Group (WRG).   WRG's courses lead to units accredited by the Open College Network.

Phase 2 — How You Can Help

In future years, we hope to:

  • offer the training programme to further homeless and otherwise marginalised women;
  • help other agencies to launch their own Unknown Voices initiatives using the template that we have devised;
  • build the library of recordings presented on this website, perhaps extending it to other socially marginalised groups:  refugees, ex-offenders, etc;
  • enable agencies and community workers to use Unknown Voices interviews to cathartic effect. 

 

Please contact Paddy Gormley to discuss opportunities for further development of the project or simply to comment on this website or the issues it raises

Back to Top

Click for the audio recordings page

spacer

Julie Hil, RIP

The Unknown Voices project was temporarily suspended in 2008 out of respect for the late Julie Hill, without whom the project would not have happened:  Julie died of cancer in July 2008. 

Unknown Voices project co-founder Paddy Gormley (pictured right, with Julie in November 2007) writes:

"We hope to continue the work of Unknown Voices as a lasting tribute to Julie.  In addition to our ongoing work with homeless people, we wish to extend the project to address other areas of marginalisation, including refugees, ex-offenders, people with disabilities and the long-term unemployed.  All offers of support, financial and/or in-kind, will be gratefully received."

Paddy Gormley and the late Julie Hill