Stepping Outside

Stepping Outside is a film project started by Lee Halpin, founding editor of the North East’s culture and arts magazine Novel. Lee set out to make a film about homelessness, which was an issue close to his heart. Lee was concerned that cuts to services, the bedroom tax and the removal of legal aid would severely increase the number of homeless people.

To highlight the plight of homeless people across the country Lee said he wanted to “immerse myself in that lifestyle as deeply as I can,” by documenting himself sleeping rough for a week, accessing the services that homeless people in the West End of Newcastle use and by interacting with other homeless people as much as possible.

Tragically, three days into the project Lee was found dead in a derelict hostel, aged just 26. Lee made the ultimate sacrifice as a journalist and a human being to raise awareness for a very pertinent issue. This was typical of Lee, who despite having an MA in creative writing and plethora of talents and attributes had considered re-training to be a nurse out of his desire to help others. Lee used his position as editor of Novel and his slot on Radio Tyneside to selflessly plug the myriad talent that his native region had to offer.

We are a small group of Lee’s closest friends, some of whom Lee was working on the film with. We intend to finish Lee’s film as true to the vision he had for it as possible. We would then like to use the film to highlight the very serious problems it will explore and hopefully to raise money to alleviate the problems associated with homelessness and try to prevent more people becoming homeless as a result of the current attack by a government of millionaires on the poorest in our society.

If you think this is a worthwhile project please stay in touch – we’ll let you know how the project is going and you’ll be the first to know how we’re doing.  You can do this here.

Please also consider donating to the project via paypal. If you do not have the means to do this, please do what you can to spread the message via Twitter, Facebook, email and of course, good old fashioned word-of-mouth.

Thank you.