Social Housing – A Century Of Future Visions On Film

This film show features three important films dealing with the issues and achievements associated with Social Housing over the past hundred years.

HOUSING PROBLEMS (1935) was a pioneering film using voices and stories of working class men and women showing the dreadful living conditions in the slums of the early 20th Century. Captured for the first time on film, ordinary people talk straight to the camera from inside their homes. We are used to this technique today, but to film each interview in this film the filmmakers had to take a whole window out of one wall, stand the camera and crew in the pavement outside and film in through the window space (there wasn’t enough space to fit them into the small rooms). The full horror of the slums is brought home, as the badly housed talk about the deaths of their children and daily encounters with vermin - the camera pans round to show crooked stairs, collapsed roofs and general dilapidation. The film ends with new ideas for planned housing estates - the irony is that war broke out in 1939 and bombing raids destroyed large areas of working class housing in London and our larger cities.

LAND OF PROMISE (1946) Extracts from this film which is brought to life using ‘multi voice’ narration - not only planners and ordinary people but voices representing ‘History’, ‘Hansard’ (quotes from parliamentary debates), ‘Isotype’ (a sociological system using pictorgrams - animated illustrations). Competing characters argue over the meaning of new ideas being presented to us. A slum-dwelling housewife argues back against the narrators and the great actor John Mills represents ‘Ordinary Britons’. The first section features national failures to co-ordinate housing policy before World War Two and the post-war section powers ahead with footage of actual schemes and engaging animations. It’s a lively and engaging ‘dramatised’ way of dealing with the whole issue of Social Housing.

100 YEARS OF SOCIAL HOUSING (2025) is a new film by Reels in Motion produced for the Stoke 100 celebrations. It explores how social housing began, why it was created and it it continues to transform lives across Stoke-on-Trent today. Archive film footage from Staffordshire Film Archive - with narration by local historian FRED HUGHES - helps set the scene historically. Starting at the Stoke Lodge estate in Trent Vale - the first social housing built just after World War One - Housing and Regeneration expert DAVE PROUDLOVE explains why social housing has been critical for the City’s life over the last century. It has allowed people to have better lives and live healthier lives. It has allowed them to grow families, to find opportunity. It was built by the people for the people. Like many others, after World War Two Stoke saw the solution to poor housing and overcrowding in our industrial city as moving people out of town centres to new estates - to build better quality, better standard homes - to have hot and cold running water, better sanitation and access to green spaces. There was a vision about building and a huge push from government - and Bentilee was our flagship social housing scheme. It was the biggest and most ambitious and it was about more than housing: it was about community facilities, shops, jobs - people were coming into big, spacious houses in a better environment with lots of open space. It changed people’s lives. We spend most of the film in Bentilee celebrating its community and community life. We hear from many local residents along with community groups, representatives and City Councillors. Social housing has a bright future because people have recognised its importance - as today we have a situation where home ownership is getting beyond the means of many people. This film is a tribute to and a celebration of Social Housing.