Responding to the Life on the Breadline exhibition: what needs to & what can change?

A rare opportunity to put your questions about UK poverty in 2024 to an an expert panel of speakers, or just to come and listen to an informed and challenging live debate. 

What traps people on the breadline? Which voices are not being listened to? What do our institutions and civil society need to do differently? How could change happen? 

Our highly respected panel includes David Bussue, Service Director, SACMHA Heath & Social Care; Shelly McDonald, Project Development Manager, National Energy Action; and Deputy Leader of Sheffield City Council, Cllr Fran Belbin.

We welcome questions in advance - which can be submitted in the checkout form.

Entry is free, but please register that you will be coming so we can plan for a high quality event.

Highfield Trinity Methodist Church is close to 20, 43, 44, 75 and 76 bus routes, and is one mile from Sheffield rail station. We do not have parking onsite, but are a short walk from city centre car parks.

The church has step free access.

Life on the Breadline was a three-year (2018-2021) research project based at the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations at Coventry University, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. Led by Dr Chris Shannahan, Dr Stephanie Denning, Robert Beckford and Peter Scott, the project analysed the nature, scope, and impact of Christian engagement with urban poverty in the UK since the 2008 financial crisis. It is the first academic theological analysis of Christian responses to UK poverty in the age of austerity that draws on detailed in-depth fieldwork across the UK in the form of interviews with national Church leaders, an online survey with regional Church leaders, and six case studies.

We are delighted to be bringing the Life on the Breadline Photographic Exhibition to Sheffield and Barnsley this Lent. This collaboration reflects our conviction that we are all called to 'transform structural injustice' and a commitment to applied research intended to support such social action. Our aim is to start conversations, to hear and amplify voices of people with lived experience of poverty, to create space for people to tell their own stories, and to reflect on how we should personally and collectively respond to what we are hearing.

Further details about the Life on the Breadline exhibition can be found at https://www.sheffieldmethodist.org/news/news-stories/life-on-breadline-exhibition.html