Banksy has installed a moving new artwork,Covet: Island of Desire which draws attention to homelessness at a particularly hard time of year for people who are sleeping rough: Christmas time.
The elusive street artist has left their mark on the UK city of Birmingham with a new artwork comprising of two of Santa Claus' reindeer spray-painted onto a wall, rising into a starry night, and seemingly attached to a public bench, which assumes the role of a sleigh in the illusion.
Banksy's team, according to an Instagram video of the work, filmed a man called Ryan, who laid down on the bench wearing a hooded jacket and leaning atop what looks like a few bags of belongings. And this apparently happened:
"God bless Birmingham," the post reads. "In the 20 minutes we filmed Ryan on this bench passers-by gave him a hot drink, two chocolate bars and a lighter — without him ever asking for anything."
View this post on Instagram
It's not clear if Ryan is actually sleeping rough or part of Banksy's team, but the message is pretty hard to miss anyway.
The post has been viewed 1.4 million times at the time of writing.
Banksy's artwork could remind people of the state of homelessness many people find themselves in, which can be particularly rough during colder months of the year around the holidays.
According to the UK national charity for people in a state of homelessness, Crisis, there is no national figure for how many people are currently homeless across the UK, but to give you an idea of the scale, it reported that 4,751 people slept rough across England on any given night in 2017.
The UK's Office for National Statistics concurs, saying that producing a UK-wide figure for the number of people or households who are homeless is not currently possible due to differences in data collection. But according to an independent study commissioned by Crisis, dubbed The Homelessness Monitor, there has been rapid growth in rough sleeping in England since 2010.
According to a report by UK housing charity Shelter, 135,000 children are currently homeless and living in temporary accommodation across Britain — that's the highest number they've seen for 12 years.
Something to stop and think about these holidays. In fact, you can do more than think about it.
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