Christiaan McCann

My Story – personal histories by CHRISTIAAN McCANN

A life of participation, observation and community building.

My name is CHRISTIAAN McCANN. This page gathers personal histories from different stages of my life and the communities I have lived and worked in. It is part of an independent publishing project concerned with lived experience, social work, and the ways ordinary lives brush up against public systems, policy and culture.

An editorial space for personal history

This is not a portfolio or a professional biography. It is an editorial space where personal experience and public life are allowed to sit next to each other and be questioned.

Over time, this page will collect stories from different periods of my life: early years, homelessness, work within social services, attempts at study, music, family, disability and community projects. Some pieces will be intimate, some practical, some openly unsure of what they mean.

Individual stories may appear here as full articles, as shorter sketches, or as working notes. When a story grows beyond this page, it will be published as a separate article within this independent personal publishing platform, with clear links back here so you can see how different pieces of my life connect.

You are invited to read these as situated accounts: one person moving through institutions, streets, shared houses, services, bands, friendships and neighbourhoods, and trying to make sense of what happens there.

Read by life stage

A simple chronology to keep your bearings. These stages overlap in practice, but they help organise the stories that will appear here.

Early years and family beginnings

Short vignettes from childhood and early family life will appear here, tracing how class, belief and work were first presented to me as “normal”.

Adolescence and leaving home

Pieces here will look at leaving home, early relationships, first encounters with worklessness and the institutions that claim to manage it.

Rough sleeping and homelessness

Stories in this section will sit with the detail of rough sleeping, hostels and street outreach – not to shock, but to examine how people and systems actually behave.

Low income, work and welfare systems

Here I follow low-paid jobs, sanctions, assessments and the everyday negotiations people make when rules are badly designed.

Education and attempts at study

These accounts will cover schools, universities and informal study – including the times I walked away or was pushed out.

Social work and community projects

This section will include stories from formal social work posts and informal community initiatives – the places where ideals, bureaucracy and human need collide.

Disability and health

Pieces here will attend to the body: illness, impairment, diagnosis, and what support looks like when it is genuinely collaborative – or when it is not.

Family and relationships

Here I will write about care, conflict, parenting, estrangement and repair – the slow work of staying in relationship.

Music and community development

These stories will follow bands, rehearsal rooms, youth projects and neighbourhood spaces where music becomes a kind of social work by other means.

Read by theme

Stories here will be cross-linked by theme as well as by time. The themes below will become live collections as new pieces are published.

Early Life
Homelessness
Poverty
Education
Social Work
Disability
Family
Relationships
Music
Community Development

Early Life

Accounts of upbringing, place and early ideas about who counts as “us” and “them”.

Homelessness

Stories that stay close to lived experience of rough sleeping and temporary accommodation, and ask what “support” really looked like.

Poverty

Episodes of debt, hunger and improvisation, treated as evidence about how policy lands in everyday lives.

Education

Experiences in and around formal education, including the ways working-class and disabled students are welcomed or excluded.

Social Work

Reflections from inside social work and adjacent roles, written with respect for colleagues and a willingness to name harm.

Disability

Accounts of fluctuating capacity, formal labels and the politics of who is believed.

Family

Scenes from family life: support, pressure, loss and repair, written without turning relatives into case studies.

Relationships

Close relationships, friendships and collaborations – how they form, how they end, and what they make possible.

Music

Tour vans, rehearsal rooms, tiny stages and the informal care networks that travel with them.

Community Development

Community centres, mutual aid, youth projects and informal organising – the quiet work of building spaces where people can act together.

Stories in draft and in print

This section will host links to individual story articles as they are written and revised. Some will be brief sketches; others will be longer pieces with notes, references and reflections that sit alongside the narrative. Where relevant, stories will be linked to research notes elsewhere on the site so that experience, evidence and policy can be read together rather than collapsed into one another.

For now, the cards below are placeholders. They sketch the shape of what is likely to emerge and help you see how different strands of My Story may later be navigated.

Cardboard, concrete and borrowed blankets

A series of scenes from rough sleeping and hostel life, written closely enough to show the politics that live inside small decisions: where to sit, who to trust, what to say to a worker with a clipboard.

Read the forthcoming story: Cardboard, concrete and borrowed blankets

Lecture notes from the back row

An account of trying to study while navigating poverty, unstable housing and disability, and of the quiet exclusions that never make it into prospectuses.

Read the forthcoming story: Lecture notes from the back row

A rehearsal room is also a meeting room

Stories from bands and community music projects where songs, food and rent advice end up in the same conversation.

Read the forthcoming story: A rehearsal room is also a meeting room

As new pieces are completed, these placeholders will be replaced with live article cards. Each card will indicate which life stages and themes it connects to, so you can move between stories without relying on menus or drop-downs.

On memory, interpretation and evidence

Every story on this page is written from memory and from my current understanding of events. Memory is partial, selective and shaped by later experiences. Where I describe people, places or institutions, I am offering a personal interpretation, not an authorised history.

Nothing here should be mistaken for established academic findings. When I draw on research, I will say so clearly and signpost readers to sources and methods. When I am speculating or trying out a working hypothesis, I will also say that clearly. The aim is not to turn lived experience into data, but to hold it up alongside evidence and argument so that both can be questioned.