Wake-up call: raising the awareness of affordable housing

It’s not every day that you get to sit in your pyjamas in Trafalgar Square at 4am on a Sunday morning in the pouring rain. And why would you?

But when Jon Snape, a manager at Great Places Housing Group, was given the opportunity to spend an hour on the Fourth Plinth as part of Anthony Gormley’s ‘One And Other’ project it felt like a dream come true.

Jon and his Great Places colleagues decided to use their allotted slot to stage a pyjama party to raise awareness about affordable housing with the simple message ‘Everyone deserves to wake up in a Great Place’.

While Jon settled into his ‘living room’ on the Plinth his Pyjama Army, dressed in nightwear and slippers, gave away breakfast muffins and orange juice to the early morning audience of revellers heading home from the city’s clubs, and the early risers.

During his hour of fame, Jon, aged 38, blew up an inflatable sofa and settled down with cushions and a cuppa – getting up every now and then for a yawn and stretch - to make people think about the comfortable homes they take for granted.

His shouts of ‘Good morning!’, ‘Welcome to my living room!’ and ‘Have you all had some breakfast?!’ were met with whoops and cheers, as his colleagues chatted to passers-by and gave out leaflets about the need for affordable housing.

Pyjama Army member, communications officer Ryan Devlin, said: “People were really keen to hear what we had to say about housing, and keen to shout encouragement to Jon. We gave out muffins and juice to homeless people as well as people on their way home after nights out. It was great atmosphere, I’ll never forget it.”

It was a case of four seasons in one hour on the Fourth Plinth, but Jon Snape loved every minute, as he told 24housing: "I was determined to make my hour on the plinth a memorable one and thought carefully about how I could draw people’s attention to homelessness in a different way.

"We tend to take it for granted that we wake up each day somewhere nice and safe, where we can get ready to face the day. But homelessness is on the rise.

"When we arrived at Trafalgar Square, my overwhelming feeling was of wanting to get up there and get on with it.

"At first it was lashing with rain and really windy. My pyjamas and slippers were soaked through. Later, after the weather calmed down, I saw the sun rising - I just sat back and took it all in and it was beautiful.

"The crowd was great. I had lots of hecklers but it was all good natured – they were happy and appreciative. I hope we made a few people think."

Jon was picked out from thousands of applicants to take part in Sculptor Antony Gormley's One And Other project, which is taking place over 100 days. ‘Happenings’ are being streamed live at www.oneandother.co.uk

The project invites members of the UK public to create 'a living monument' on Trafalgar Square's Fourth Plinth.

Every hour, 24-hours-a-day, for 100 days without a break until October 14, a different person will be making the Plinth their own.

If you’re lucky enough to be selected, you can use your 60 minutes to do anything you like as long as it’s legal and take up anything you can carry – as long as it’s not alive.

All ‘plinthers’ have to be over 16 and living or staying in the UK.

They are selected at random by computer, with certain percentages allocated to residents of each area of the country.

So far more than 27,000 people have applied to take part in the project with video footage and personal accounts to be eventually held in an archive at the National Portrait Gallery.

The plinth was built in 1841 as one of four and was due to bear an equestrian statue. However, due to a lack of funds, it remained empty until it was first used to display art works in 1998.

London-based Gormley is best known for his creation Angel of the North, in Gateshead, along with his Another Place artwork.