Shoes Have Names
2020
Installation, collaborative social project, footwear artworks
Project description
Shoes Have Names is a collaborative installation project developed by Jo Cope in partnership with Shelter Charity, presented as part of London Craft Week at Boutique by Shelter in Coal Drops Yard, London. The project responds to the housing crisis by addressing homelessness through specificity rather than abstraction, insisting on recognition, naming and dignity as central ethical concerns.
The project brings together ten international shoe designers, each invited to create a footwear work in response to the story of a person who had experienced homelessness and was supported by Shelter. Each shoe or pair of shoes is named after the individual whose story informed the work, positioning naming as a critical act that resists anonymity and challenges the distancing effect of the blanket term “homeless.”
Designers were encouraged to work within their own material languages and design specialisms, allowing craft, form and process to act as interpretive tools rather than illustrative devices. Shoes function here as narrative carriers, embedding lived experience within material form while negotiating questions of authorship, responsibility and representation. By foregrounding objects as the primary bearers of narrative, the project reframes footwear not as symbol alone, but as an empathetic vessel through which care, listening and translation can operate.
A striking red visual aesthetic runs throughout the installation, operating as a deliberate call to attention. Red functions as a marker of urgency, signalling the immediacy of the housing crisis and demanding response. Rather than operating decoratively, the colour establishes a visual field that frames the exhibition as an emergency, insisting on proximity rather than distance.
Shoes Have Names seeks to dismantle stigma surrounding homelessness by making visible its many faces and by emphasising how closely housing precarity sits within everyday life. The project proposes fashion as a social tool capable of facilitating dialogue, connection and ethical engagement, bringing together communities who might not otherwise meet and enabling exchange through shared creative process.
Artist statement
Shoes Have Names uses fashion as an empathetic vehicle through which stories of homelessness can be made visible and specific. By naming each shoe after a real person supported by Shelter, the project works against the loss of identity that so often accompanies housing insecurity. Shoes become narrative vessels carrying individual stories, presence and dignity and inviting recognition rather than abstraction.
Both Fashion’s and arts role within society is changing, and this project reflects a shift toward more ethical, human‑centred approaches to making. Through collaboration, care and naming, the work proposes connection as a counter‑structure to isolation, and creative practice as a means of fostering recognition, agency and belonging.
Documentation
Photography Hattie Lamb
Presented at
Boutique by Shelter, Coal Drops Yard, King’s Cross, London
As part of London Craft Week — October 2020
Developed in collaboration with Shelter Charity
Exhibition collaboration: Jo Cope × Boutique by Shelter
10 designers × 10 individual stories
Contributing designers
Caroline Groves
Dr Ellen Sampson
Daniel Charkow
Elisabeth Thorsen
Kobi Levi
Kristina Walsh
Liz Ciokajlo
Jackie Leggett
Jana Zornik
Tabitha Ringwood
Project website
Project iterations & re‑contextualisations
Since its initial presentation, Shoes Have Names has been re‑staged across multiple institutional, community and industry contexts. Each iteration retained the project’s core ethical framework while responding to the specific conditions and responsibilities of its host venue.
New Brewery Arts Gallery, Cirencester
January – April 2022
The first gallery presentation of Shoes Have Names, marking a landmark moment for Shelter’s engagement with contemporary art. The work was displayed on plinths filled with donated bedding, later redistributed to local homelessness charities. New Brewery Arts Gallery’s role in housing homeless individuals during the pandemic positioned the venue as an ethically aligned partner, embedding care, use and redistribution into the project’s material structure.Z33 – House of Contemporary Art, Architecture and Design, Hasselt, Belgium
October 2022 – February 2023
Presented as part of the group exhibition Fitting In, the project was positioned within a broader curatorial discourse addressing plurality, identity and social belonging. In this context, Shoes Have Names entered dialogue with international practices working across art, design and fashion, foregrounding questions of visibility, inclusion and the politics of naming.YKK Showroom, London
January – April 2024
Re‑contextualised under the title Accessories of Activism in conjunction with London Fashion Week, the project was framed within an industry setting, engaging directly with debates around ethical responsibility, production and the evolving social role of fashion
