By Ellie Hutchinson, private renting project manager at Shelter Scotland

Over the last few months, we’ve been working with folk with experience of private renting in Scotland to understand more about how they feel about their housing, using photography. We wanted to find new ways to hear from groups of people who might not normally take part in government consultations or policy reviews. We wanted to put the power (and the camera!) in their hands to truly understand what they want to change and how we can support that.

With the help of Open Aye we worked with families, young people and LGBT groups in Renfrewshire, Edinburgh and Linlithgow. They told us that affordability, accessibility, suitability, discrimination and external factors – such as green space and facilities – are important to them. They told us that housing is a human right and that they deserve somewhere decent to call home.

These powerful images and captions were displayed at the Scottish Parliament on Thursday night. We’ll also be hosting local exhibitions in the New Year across Scotland, inviting renters and decision makers to come and chat about their experiences, as well as the photos themselves.

We want to use these images as a springboard for more conversations, more learning, so we can take these experiences to decision makers to make real and meaningful change.

On these five themes we’ll be focussing our future project work on:

If you’d like to share your story about private renting, or find out when the images will be on display in place near you, check us out on Facebook and sign up to our newsletter.

To find out more about Shelter Scotland’s private renting project work please contact James Battye, Private Renting Project Manager, email: james_battye@shelter.org.uk.