As Managing Director of Restart, a homelessness charity working in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, I shifted the organisation’s focus from emergency provision alone towards participation, connection and practical routes forward. Restart’s purpose was to support people experiencing homelessness to overcome the personal and systemic barriers between the street and independent living.

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The Saturday-night drop-in was central to this work. It provided food and warmth, but I observed its potential as something more: a regular space where people experiencing homelessness, local organisations, funders, employers, public services and volunteers could meet as people—not as separate groups organised around a problem.

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The service was designed to blur the usual boundary between “helper” and “helped.” Many guests became active contributors: cooking alongside chefs, becoming the Chef, collecting surplus food from donating partners, welcoming people in, setting up the space and sharing knowledge with others. That subtle change reshaped who the service was really for: the volunteers, or the people who had come for support? In practice, it became a shared space of mutual contribution, where everyone had something useful to offer.

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This was not simply a more dignified way to run a meal service. It created an environment in which people could build trust, practise responsibility, become visible to partners across the sector and begin to reconnect with work and community. A weekly meal became a platform for relationships—and relationships became infrastructure for change.

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Restart also became a generative place for new ideas. Just as InHouse Records grew beyond music to create Aux Magazine and Lucky 13’s, the work at Restart helped seed projects including Side Door and Carlowrie Academy. Each extended the same underlying belief: lasting responses to homelessness are not delivered to people; they are developed with them, from the capabilities, relationships and possibilities already present.