The Winter’s Journey Project uses classical music to amplify the voices of mothers who have experience housing insecurity. You can read an article about the original concert from the KQED Arts blog here.
After moving back to the US, I was struck by the desperation of inequality, most dramatically evident on the streets of San Francisco and all over the East Bay. The haunting words and melodies of the Winterreise kept coming to mind as the most fitting music for this societal heartbreak. After a year of research into the facts and roots of California’s homelessness, as well as work as a utility advocate, I brought my concept to life in May of 2019 as a live concert of Schubert's Winterreise performed alongside audio clips of interviews with mothers who had experienced housing instability telling their own stories. As I interviewed the mothers for this project, I was preparing for my own journey as a mother; my first child was born at the end of June 2019.
During Covid, I decided to turn it into a documentary film/music video hybrid, which seeks to reveal the often invisible struggle of family housing instability in America through the words of mothers who have faced the struggle themselves. Their stories are supported by the music and poetry Schubert’s Winterreise, a 19th century song cycle about being cast out, heartbroken, and homeless in the dead of winter, to take us on an emotional, political, and spiritual journey to examine our society's values, morals, action and inaction on this timely issue and to raise funds to support organizations attacking the root causes of family housing instability.
It will feature interviews with mothers from across the country: urban, suburban, and rural areas, as well as performances from a diverse group of female artists.
The goals behind this project is twofold:
To deepen public understanding of the lived experience of a kind of homelessness they do not see on the street - the often invisible plight of families in transition.
Raise money for organizations that are taking steps to help end this sort of crisis. We have identified community land trusts and permanent real estate cooperatives as the lights in the darkness of this issue. These stewardship organizations make it possible for low- to mid-income families to permanently live in affordable housing while retaining their own self-determination. Under this model, families live at cost and are part of managing their own housing.