It’s the second year Heath Gay will be taking to the streets to raise awareness through his BeKind movement, and this year his journey is bound for the capital.
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Last year Gay walked from Newcastle to Sydney over a week before living with the city’s homeless people for a month.
“I’m not too worried about sleeping rough this time around, I even [slept rough] in Melbourne last weekend ,” Gay said. “That bit is the easy part now, it’s more about how difficult it can be to find contacts and support.”
“One of the major parts of my plan this time around is to find people between Newcastle and Canberra that want to get involved in selling stickers and shirts – last time I was immersed in the culture I found so many of them felt ashamed to simply beg for money and help, but when they are offering things back for the assistance they are okay with it.”
The second time Gay walks from Newcastle will see him add a new leg to his trip as well, and he’s revealed a camera crew may be his travel companions.
“It’s about getting all of the industry onboard, and getting the tattoo TV show that approached me involved will be a great step,” he said.
“I don’t really want to be famous, it’s not about that at all, but I know this is apart of getting it all out there.”
It’s not just the Canberra leg that’s new – inked Rose Tattoo vocalist Angry Anderson has come onboard through a web-cast series.
“Angry’s assistant got in touch with me and we started planning to get my journey onto the screen, and normally people who are on the show have to pay $5000, but a woman in Canberra is sponsoring my segment,” Gay revealed. “That gave me the reason to go to Canberra.”
Gay’s journey will begin on Beaumont Street on the first days of March, when he plans to bring homeless support services like laundry services and meals-on-wheels access together.
“I just want to make it a thing that we can get going regularly, where the homeless people can come together here in Newcastle and have this place they can all meet,” he said. “There’s an average of 59 people sleeping rough here in town every night, so they need our support.”
After his March march from Newcastle to the capital, Heath Gay will also be promoting more of the support of the homeless through the selling of Inkd Movement stickers and t-shirts, and he will be aiming to expand the company so he can employ more people looking for work.
“I want it to become a cycle where there’s homeless people selling these things and so they’re making money and being able to get food and live properly, and then that means I can employ more homeless people to be in the back end of production and pressing shirts and things like that,” he explained.
“It’s all connected in that I speak to all these people on my walk in March and then they come together and help the homeless and bring the tattoo industry into this positive light. It’s just positive thing after positive thing that all feeds off supporting each other in these groups and communities.”
If you want to find out more about the Be Kind project, or Inkd Movement, head to Heath’s website to read his on-street blog or get more information about the plights of the homeless: inkdevotion.com.