Joshua Coombes, ‘Hairdresser to the Homeless’ on: Doing something for nothing
Meet Joshua Coombes, ‘Hairdresser to the Homeless’. In 2015, while working at a London hair salon, he took to the streets with his scissors to build relationships and offer haircuts to people experiencing homelessness. He began posting transformative images on social media to amplify the voices of those he met. The stories that accompanied these photos resonated, and others began to get involved in their own way. #DoSomethingForNothing was born—a movement that encourages people to connect their skills and time to those who need them.
How it started
That first evening, I was on the way to a client’s house after working in the salon all day, and I had my scissors, my clippers and everything to cut somebody’s hair in my bag. I saw somebody living on the street at the time and offered them a haircut. This wasn’t something I thought about before; “how I could go out and impact people’s lives as one person when you’re looking at a problem as big as homelessness”. I think we can all feel overwhelmed by this. But, the haircuts taught me that it does mean a lot and is incredibly important if you have nothing else to give but your time.
Humans showing up for one another
I think we have a long way to go as far as some of the social issues we face. The most significant part of that was trying to get past these lifestyle stereotypes about a particular group of people who are experiencing homelessness, a significantly marginalised group of people who can often be invisible.
I talk to people who have experienced a lot of hardship and people who are suffering, and sometimes it’s not that easy, but it feels much better interacting than it does just walking by. If you go weeks, months, or years being homeless, you become incredibly isolated from the people around you. We all know what it’s like to internalise and for those negative thoughts and those unkind ways that we can speak to ourselves to perpetuate.
Advice for others wanting to give back
I always say to people, whatever you want to do with your life, whatever you are doing with your life, of course, it’s essential to follow your passions creatively, and whatever success looks like for you in your personal life and your work career. But the best way I think about this is, you can do all those things, but I think another cup is essential to fill up. So it’s your personal growth; I believe that being of service to the people in your community and giving your time when there’s no money exchanged and you’re going out there to spend time and be present is essential.
The main thing I’d say is to write down three things that you enjoy, maybe hobbies or things you’re good at. Then write down the areas that you see in the world that you might want to make a change. You can start in your community, things that you might want to be able to help with or something that you’d like to change and try and join those up because I think that passion keeps you going out to do those things.
His personal transformation
When you’re passionate about something, you make it happen, and I’ve always done that with different projects in my life. What feels different now is that this is my life’s work. Before, I did certain things through passion and enjoyed them as a job whilst having a creative outlet and feeling some meaning in my life. But since I started going out and doing this about six years ago now, I feel a connection to being here and to life that I don’t think I did before. It has made me realise I have more purpose and meaning than ever before. And I think it’s given me a lot of growth in other aspects of my life.
Posted by Katie Daley
