Following my residency in Slovenia, I returned to live in Peckham, South London in 2014 to find that the housing crisis I’d blissfully escaped from for a year was even more intensified. The exponential growth in the private rental market and the shortage of social housing was then (as it is now) a major issues with far reaching social implications.

‘Campmuters’ (Christain Koch, The Evening Standard) are predominantly professional individuals who commute to work from campsites and parks on the outskirts of London due to prohibitively expensive rental rates. ‘Wherever I lay my hat’ is inspired by and references these real life stories and questions what distinguishes a home from a shelter.

‘Wherever I lay my hat’ features ‘Charlene Chaplin’, a visibly pregnant young woman who is camping outside the demolished Heygate Estate in Peckham (a site that once housed 3,000 people). The film references the slapstick comedy used in Charlie Chaplin’s silent films who was born in South London and worked in a Workhouse in Elephant and Castle.

In films like ‘The vagabond’ Charlie Chaplin uses slapstick comedy to reveal shocking attitudes towards equality and poverty. ‘Wherever I lay my hat also uses the device of slapstick in order to highlight contemporary issues connected to economic marginalisation inequality and social stereotyping.