Listen: People Just Do Something – Fadumo Farah on Barton House, ACORN and a Holiday Inn mattress blockade

People Just Do Something is a relaxing and possibly enraging podcast about people who might self-identify as activists, untangling the means of effecting change in Bristol, broken Britain and beyond.

Photos: Alexander Turner

People Just Do Something 2nd September, 2024

George Colwey, Priyanka Raval and Isaac Kneebone-Hopkins

When Barton Hill mum Fadumo Farah wound up living in a cramped Holiday Inn room with a “horrendous” mattress after her tower block home was evacuated last year, she wasn’t going to take it lying down.

Staff at the hotel, where many people from Barton House ended up inadequately housed for months while the high-rise was investigated over safety fears, initially refused to change the grim mattress after Fadumo complained.

“I went upstairs, dragged it all the way down to reception and was like, ‘This is the mattress, do you want to change it now?’” she tells People Just Do Something hosts Priyanka and Isaac. “Everyone was looking. Three, four other people brought theirs down – and straightway they changed everything.”

Fadumo says she has always had an interest in social justice – but had never previously been an active campaigner. But over the last winter, she became one of the main public faces of a campaign by Barton House residents, organised by the community union ACORN, to demand better treatment after being forced to leave their homes.

What were the steps along her journey, which has now broadened out to encouraging other members of Bristol’s Somali community to get more involved in local political issues? As a busy mother, who also works and is studying for a masters, what does activism mean to Fadumo? And why has ACORN become so successful at organising among the diverse residents of Bristol’s high-rise estates?

Tune in to the latest episode of People Just Do Something, the Cable’s brand-new podcast, to find out.

The first series of People Just Do Something will run from August to October, with six episodes coming out every two weeks. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.