A space between: Social work through the lens of a mobile tiny house encounter space

Abstract

This paper reflects on a cross-sector social intervention that uses roadworthy ‘tiny house’ shepherd’s huts in public spaces as informal locations for connectivity. Working at the intersections between street-level outreach, outdoor education and community arts, the Welcome Hut project can be conceptualised as a hospitality hub. Participants engage in public daydreaming and storytelling that emerges from a welcoming gesture of recognition and reciprocity. The autoethnographic narrative by the project’s initiator traces back how this concrete utopia had initially been created outside of social work networks and gradually gained legitimacy in the field. The paper shares methodological insights from operating a deliberately unlocated mobile practice. It is argued that a ‘vagabond’ intervention opens novel in-between spaces for dialogue through relational disruption. By nurturing spaces for otherness inside social work, the emerging interstices enable practitioners to be inspired by unusual perspectives on professionalism and reimagine their own conditions. This paper is therefore written at the unclassified in-betweens to transcend rigid belongings and disciplinary protocol within contemporary beyond-binary social complexities. The researcher angle that investigates social workers’ everyday realities is voluntarily displaced towards migratory arts venues. Unusual narratives can encourage breathing spaces in fragile and fertile liminalities between life worlds and institutional agendas.