A Selection of Links

I. (British) universities, think tanks and organisations dedicated to poverty research

• The Brooks World Poverty Institute at the University of Manchester: David Lewis, Dennis Rodgers and Michael Woolcock have set up a website accompanying their original article “The Fiction of Development”. There you can find find the journal version as well as the working paper version of their study on the possible contribution of literary texts to the knowledge on poverty and development policy (earlier version: here). In the BWPI Working Papers section you can find further research, for example their follow-up article on film: “The Projections of Development”.
• The Townsend Centre for Poverty Research at the University of Bristol

• PSE – Poverty and Social Exclusion Project: An ECRC-funded collaborative research project of several universities (University of Bristol, Heriot-Watt University, The Open University, Queen's University Belfast, University of Glasgow and the University of York in cooperation with the National Centre for Social Research and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency). The website has made available online several classical texts on poverty research: Breadline Britain, Poor Britain and Peter Townsend’s Poverty in the United Kingdom: A Survey of Household Resources and Standards of Living

• A subproject of a major German research initiative on ‘Strangers and Poor People’ (Inclusion and Exclusion) at the University of Trier, Germany, was concerned with the relationship between visual media and charity in Britain and Germany around 1900 and, in particular, travelling lantern shows.
• The Social and Spatial Inequalities Research Group at the University of Sheffield. Of particular interest is a podcast which collects contributions by Danny Dorling (whose Tube book we also discuss in our project publication).
• The Joseph Rowntree Foundation publishes widely on poverty. Apart from detailed factual reports on poverty and social exclusion, e.g. on the role of institutions and structures, the JRF also reflects on the role of journalists and students in reporting on poverty and offers advice and material for balanced story-telling.
• Further think tanks offering resources and expertise are the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Fabian Society, (see a report on ending poverty), the New Policy Institute, but also the Runnymede Trust, which has tackled poverty at the intersection of ethnicity and class.

II. Articles, Graphs, Facts, Figures, Tools For Exploring and Other Media:

• Newspaper Reporting: The Guardian features two article collections on poverty, which are updated automatically: “Poverty” and “Breadline Britain”. Its “Facts Are Sacred” Datablog can be searched for graphs visualising factors and indicators of poverty and features, among many others, a map of who is most vulnerable to poverty in the UK, of where child poverty is most widespread, discusses whether the poor are getting poorer, and whether poverty played a role in the London riots 2011). There is also data available for poverty in the capital – which can be contrasted with the historical map of London by Charles Booth, hosted on the LSE's website. The New York Times, upon noticing that it had neglected its coverage of poverty initiated two similar sections which are updated regularly: “The Great Divide” and a subsection of “Fixes”.
• Why Poverty? An extensive initiative was “Why Poverty?”, a collaboration of several international television stations which broadcast a series of documentaries simultaneously in 2012. Initiated by a non-profit organisation whose tagline is “Steps – Great stories can change our world”, it has continued the debate on the website Why Poverty?, where all short and documentary films can be watched online (they’re also available through the project’s youtube channel. With regard to Britain, especially recommended is Poor Us: An Animated History and Give Us the Money. Additional material for teachers is also available. The Open University designed an online course to accompany the series. It also hosts an online course on “The Language of Poverty”.
• Am I poor? Several websites offer tools with which to explore where one would be placed on the social spectrum in comparison to others: see the “Why Poverty” Dataviz, the BBC class calculator: “What Class Are You?” and: “Where do you fit in?” by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
• Graphs, Facts, Figures, Tools for exploring: In addition to the Guardian’s maps (see above), the 1995 edition of Danny Dorling’s A New Social Atlas of Britain (1995) can be revisited online. The Worldmapper website, lead by Danny Dorling, features extensive maps on global poverty.
• Charities and Campaigns: Some exemplary charities and pressure groups are the Child Poverty Action Group, SOS Save the Children, did several photo projects (see below). Further examples are Oxfam (Poverty in the UK), Make Lunch, and Poverty Homelessness Action Week, which staged productions of „Broke“, a play we discuss in our book, nationwide in 2009 (see below).
• Your Voice: in October 2013, the Guardian invited readers to share their perspective and stories on poverty.

III. Additional Media

• Photography has come a long way since John Thomson's Street Life in London). Apart from more conventional stock images  there are also more ambitious projects: initiatives like Save the Children's "Our Lives"  and "It Shouldn’t Happen Here", which included a photo series by Spencer Murphy. Children at a youth club, whose portraits were taken, explained what poverty means to them. (More images available from the artist's website and the Guardian.) The Joseph Rowntree Foundation offers hints for photographers who would like to chronicle poverty. Aesthetically and artistically and aesthetically complex photographers include Chris Killip and Nick Waplington, in particular his “Living Room” project.
• Theatre: An important example discussed in our book is a collaboration between Christine Bacon, the Iceandfire theatre collective and Poverty and Homelessness Action Week. The script of “Broke” can be downloarded here; the locations where it was staged and additional information can be found here.
• Film: Useful search engines for conventional and challenging depictions of poverty on tv and on film can be found here and here (select "Job/Profession/Poverty" from the first drop-down menu listed under "plot"). The Joseph Rowntree Foundation offers short films giving insights into how people experience poverty.