A performance and discussion, exclusively for Cardboard Citizens Members, about our project on The Vagrancy Act – the history of lives rediscovered.
Over the past year, we’ve been working with historian Nick Crowson (from Birmingham University) who has scoured court reports, newspapers, asylum and workhouse records across the Midlands over 150 years, to trace the lives of homeless individuals ‘on the tramp’ who have fallen foul of versions of the ancient Vagrancy Act which continues to victimise homeless people to this day.
Cardboard Citizens actors bring two of these characters come to life before your eyes as we try to imagine these others lives and see how different (or not) they are from our own.