Sleep Pod Keyring

Last week I saw a post from Homeless Project Scotland that stopped me in my tracks. Photographs of people sleeping in tents and Sleep Pods on a Glasgow pavement in 2026, in Scotland, lined up like the images we are used to seeing after climate disasters, fires or floods. Except this was not a disaster somewhere far away. This was here. This was now. This was home.

Behind every one of those tents and pods is a person. Someone’s son, daughter, mum, dad, brother or sister. And the truth is simple and devastating. No one should be sleeping like this.

I found the post heartbreaking. Shameful, even. It made me feel that I could not just scroll past and carry on with my day. I needed to respond in the only way I know how, with my craft. Not with a tea cosy this time, but with something symbolic, something small, something that carries meaning.

So I picked up my pencil and sketched a Sleep Pod keyring.

The real Sleep Pods are extraordinary. They save lives, they offer warmth, and they give people a tiny measure of safety when there is nowhere else to go. But in the twenty‑first century, in the UK, we should not need emergency pods to keep people alive overnight. We should not be relying on charity to replace the basic right to somewhere safe to sleep.

The keyring design is poignant because of what it represents. People are sleeping in these pods. More pods are needed because so many people are sleeping rough. And the one thing every homeless person desperately needs, the thing they do not have, is a key to their own front door.

This tiny knitted Sleep Pod keyring is my response. A symbol of rest, dignity and the hope of safety. A way to raise awareness and funds for Homeless Project Scotland. A reminder to those in power that homelessness is not an abstract issue. It is happening on our streets, tonight.

I will be releasing the knitting pattern for free. I hope people will knit the keyrings, use them, sell them to raise money for Homeless Project Scotland, and that they might send one to the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice and Housing, Shirley‑Anne Somerville MSP, to show support for the homeless and to express how deeply this issue matters.

No one in our country should have to endure homelessness. No one should be left outside.

This sketch is the beginning of something small, but I hope it can help spark something bigger.









Tags: raising awareness