What does it mean for someone to be experiencing hardship? There is not one fixed definition of hardship. As part of this research into hidden hardship in the North Cotswolds I’ve been asking people experiencing and/or responding to hardship what hardship means to them. In the coming months I’ll be able to share the findings of a working definition of rural hidden hardship.
One thing that people are mentioning to me time and time again when I ask them about hardship is “struggle”. Struggling in daily life for things and activities that others take for granted. This is perhaps exacerbated in rural areas where people can be more isolated by poor transport links, a lack of facilities and amenities, slower internet speeds, and shops being potentially more expensive.
The image below illustrates the struggle of hardship. It is drawn by Beth Waters for this research, and will be featured in the Hidden Hardship exhibition at Coventry Cathedral in January 2024. Alongside this image will be a further set of images drawn my Beth to illustrate the words shared with me during this research of people experiencing and/or responding to hardship in the rural North Cotswolds. Watch this space for more details on how to attend the exhibition, and sign up to this blog to receive an event invitation.
The cycle of hardship image shows the struggle and precarity of hardship: how employment, private transport, internet access, supermarket locations, food costs, the weather, heating costs, illness, and the cost of rent all feed into hardship and the difficulty of getting oneself out of hardship.
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