Three public murals in east London, Bristol, and Reading present the stories of four former rough sleepers, Lee, Tamika, Ray, and Lawretta, with embedded codes allowing passersby to hear the participants narrate lives extending beyond homelessness. [1]

Lee's mural joins references to music, creativity, Ireland, and a key with his account of returning to London for mental-health support, sleeping rough, receiving outreach help, and later volunteering and leading creative-writing classes.

The project resists reducing people to hardship, but its ethical strength depends on what editorial control and continuing consent the four participants retained over their names, images, words, locations, recordings, and the charity's use of their recovery stories.

St Mungo's says 77% of people it helped off the streets last year were not seen to return to rough sleeping, an attributed statistic that cannot prove program-caused recovery without a denominator, follow-up period, missingness rules, comparator, return definition, housing pathway, cost, and funding terms.

The murals are completed cultural acts and the voices deserve attention on their own terms; they are neither a London heat-service prevalence study nor proof of intervention effectiveness, and the next account should measure services without turning Lee, Tamika, Ray, or Lawretta into illustrations for a result not yet established.

-- MAYA CALLOWAY, New York