“I hope you don’t mind”, says Kerry, “I’ve put you down for leading a workshop on Open Space Community.” I’ve just arrived at the conference and within minutes I find myself sitting with a microphone in my hand in a circle of people of all ages from all over the world inviting them to join ‘my’ workshop. What on earth am I doing here?
Open Space: threat or promise?
It’s not a complete surprise. The reason I’m here at WOSonOS 2012, this year’s global gathering of Open Space practitioners, is because Kerry Napuk wanted Leith Open Space to talk about connecting and developing a community through Open Space. He says we’re unique. Kerry, I should add, is an old friend, an Open Space practitioner and facilitator of great standing and his work with Glasgow men’s health groups was the inspiration for the first Leith Open Space event for ethnic minority communities in 2005.
That’s the back-story in brief. But it doesn’t help me much right now in Stoke Newington Town Hall buzzing with the energy of people who all seem to know very much more about Open Space than I do.
I am not a trained practitioner. In seven years of organising Open Space events I have never facilitated a workshop. To make matters worse I even have some misgivings about Open Space. Don’t get me wrong, every event I’ve attended generates astonishing energy. People seem genuinely liberated by being given the chance to set their own agenda. This is bottom-up democracy in action (if that doesn’t conjure up altogether the wrong picture). But how do you turn the action points voted on at the end of the event into actions in the outside world. And how do you reach the right people?
Whoever comes are the right people: Who Cares event 2010.
“Whoever comes are the right people,” one of the mantras of Open Space has often comforted me in those nervous moments before the event, wondering who, if anyone, will walk through the door. But, gripping the mic, I invite the circle to explore how we might reach more of the right people. It touches a chord in Andy from LA who immediately offers to merge his workshop on Marketing Open Space with mine. “You’ve got yourself a co-convener,” whispers Kerry.
The rest of the day, I have to say, is a bit of a blur. With an hour or so to go to my co-convened workshop I wander through the ‘market-place’. [See the video below]. The conference has been going on for two days which may explain some jostling for position. All groups go through stages: “forming, storming, norming, performing” and if this one is not exactly storming it is sometimes perhaps a bit more challenging than I expected, though with good humour.
“Excuse me, this space is now reserved for Being in the Moment”, a smiling delegate shifts our overrunning session on How Can We Organise Open Space in the Public Space? It’s time to move…
Props from Vision for Leith Walk open space event 2012
The Law of Two Feet (another Open Space mantra empowering delegates to dip in and out of workshops as the topics take them) is also exercised much more energetically than I am used to. “We’re more polite in Edinburgh”, as Kerry laconically puts it.
In fact there is so much movement in the hall I enjoy the irony that the session exploring Open Space in Public Space gets the chance to experience what it might be like to set up stall in the street outside.
“Life is Open Space and Open Space is life,” says Harrison Owen. He’s the almost legendary founder of Open Space, the man who started it all after observing that the most enjoyable part of any conference is the discussion that takes place over lunch or coffee. He is now making what he says is his last WOSONOS appearance. And here he is sitting right next to me, unmissable in his cowboy hat, enigmatically inviting the group to see how well self-regulation works when organisations are prepared to let it happen.
And so to the Open Space Community workshop. Andy, my co-convenor, a lovely laid-back guy, helps to generate a friendly exchange of ideas on the challenges of reaching the right people and keeping active interest going after the event. Asking the right questions, getting out and meeting real people in real life, organising follow-up events, involving the local media, never giving up… it was heart-warming to hear that Leith Open Space has often been on the right track, stimulating to find how we might do more and very flattering to discover that we are indeed unusual (if not unique) in establishing an Open Space community.
I meet some great people doing great work (Lill from Toronto, Jose from Lisbon, Milda from Glasgow, a lovely lady from Copenhagen whose name I did not catch), and I make one more significant discovery. Even at the World Open Space on Open Space the best conversations take place over lunch, in the queue for the Ladies or in those last few minutes when you are saying goodbye. “Open Space is life”.
Another step into the unknown, I’m on a train hurtling south from Edinburgh to London. Of all unlikely things I find myself an ambassador for Leith Open Space on my way to take part in an international conference of open spacers, more precisely the World Open Space on Open Space (WOSONOS) for participants of this defiantly participative process which – in theory anyway – gives the floor to the audience rather than the organisers. Round about York I’m casting my mind back to how it all began.
Almost exactly seven years ago, I was one of a small group of community activists taking a first nervous step into an empty open space. On a cold, dark November night we set up our stall – old trestle tables and a flip chart – in an unlit, unused retail unit at the top of the Ocean Terminal shopping mall overlooking Leith harbour. We were getting ready for our first Open Space event and we really did not know what we were letting ourselves in for. We had absolutely no idea who would turn up next day.
We had sent over 100 letters inviting people from ethnic minority communities in Leith to come together. Alarmed by a spate of racist attacks following the London bombs of July 2007, we asked: Can We Talk and Listen to One Another? Following the Open Space format we also asked them to bring their burning questions around multiculturalism.
Were we naïve? A small bunch of activists from the Leith Walk branch of the Labour Party, we were setting out to do something Labour party activists don’t usually do: give the platform to the people.
We had chosen Open Space because it is an example of grassroots democracy at work. No keynote speeches, no agenda. To my astonishment the Labour branch had unanimously agreed to support and fund a non-party political platform. Local MP and MSP (both Labour) wholeheartedly accepted the invitation to take part on the understanding that they would not be allowed to make speeches. Maggie Havergal, a professional Open Space facilitator, offered to give her time free of charge.
Maggie Havergal
Some voluntary organisations were less enthusiastic. They did not want to be associated with a political party and they warned that we would have difficulty getting people to turn up. Women would probably not want to come.
But on the day people did turn up – we counted more than 70 – and more than half of them were women. In the opening circle we sat down with well established residents as well as refugees and asylum seekers and tireless community workers: a small group of Scots among Africans, Indians, Asians, East Europeans, Latin Americans…who knew Edinburgh was so very multicultural?
In the closing circle everyone asked if we could do it again….
And so one thing led to another. With no money but lots of enthusiasm we set up Leith Open Space as a small, informal community group. From our second event in the spring grew a shadow scheme to enable people from minority communities to take part in the democratic process – Opening Doors modelled on Operation Black Vote is now in its fifth year. Third and fourth events invited community discussion on Who Cares for the Carers and What’s it Like to be Young in Leith? In May 2012 we joined up with Greener Leith to seek a Vision for Leith Walk.
Meanwhile a very dynamic splinter group had formed as Leith Open Space helped to form the extraordinarily successful World Kitchen in Leith – now three years old – based on a belief that food is perhaps the best way of bringing people together: eating together transcends language barriers!
Rami Okasha serving food at Open Space lunchtime
Looking back – sunlit fields racing passed the train window – it has been a wonderful life-changing experience for me. But I know we could and should be doing so much more. For all its strengths the open space process cannot deliver change unless there are people in the closing circle prepared to turn words into actions. Although I am always comforted by the Open Space mantra (the people who come are the right people), I know there must me many more ‘right people’ who would come if only we could reach them. After the Vision for Leith event our ever-generous facilitator Maggie Havergal suggested we should start a series of mini-events in pubs down Leith Walk. Maybe we will…keep watching this space.
Our first Open Space event took place in a very open space, a cavernous place, at the top of a shopping centre overlooking Leith harbour, one cold Sunday in November. There was no heating, no lighting, no floor covering but there was a fabulous view of the Forth. It seems a good place to start.
It seems odd reading that now, I wrote it almost five years ago when both my blog and Leith Open Spacewere very new. At that time I had no idea how much my life was about to become dominated by a voluntary involvement that would lead me into unexplored territory and – as poor Ray now knows only too well – swallow evenings and weekends whole and then come back for more.
On a personal level I do not regret it for a moment, I have met some fantastic people and made some great friends. On a more political level I know the journey is far from finished – there is a huge amount of work to be done in enabling talented groups to fulfill their potential to enrich society. My opening blog now seems a little idealistic.
I plan to use this space to explore a different kind of politics, and to tell some of the stories that rarely get into the newspapers. But first of all here is an account of a first small step towards better human understanding. For me, it offered a brief insight into the kind of multicultural community we could and should enjoy building. Full of human challenges, fears, hopes and opportunities. Just like an open space.
But there are causes for celebration on the fifth anniversary of Leith Open Space. Since November 2005, as I am about to record over on Leith Open Space, our still tiny community group has come a long way. Our two best achievements (I think) are the Opening Doors Shadow Schemeand our active involvement as founder members of World Kitchen in Leith. Both ventures have grown from the first meeting in that cold space in Ocean Terminal – the shadow scheme because participants in Open Space said it was time ethnic minorities became more involved in politics; World Kitchen simply because we discovered that the multicultural lunch was the best part of the whole day (not least because the inimitable Shaheen Unis brought a huge box of pakoras and samosas).
Interestingly that space at the top of Ocean Terminal is now a brilliant place for young people: the Transgression Skatepark. Now that is progress.
Harder than it seems, members of the audience get involved in Change earlier this year (picture by Kasia Raszewska)
At the dress rehearsal I find myself on the edge of my seat. Why is Alice not gathering information and support from her local councillors, MSP, housing associations, neighbourhood groups? Who the hell is funding this supposed empowerment project? I want to shout out, “For goodness sake, find out how the system works!” and in the end I do, though I try to put it a little more politely than that.
It’s only a play but it’s pretty true to life. Alice sees that rising house prices are killing community spirit in her neighbourhood. Ordinary people, including her best friend, can no longer afford to live there. She wants to start a campaign for social housing on a derelict site but the shiny new local community ‘empowerment project’ plans to build a hotel there. What can Alice do?
Power to the People? the latest ACTive Inquiry Forum Theatre production – starting on Sunday in Out of the Blue – draws its storyline from real people in Leith where a shortage of housing pushes prices beyond the reach of too many buyers (too true and not just in Leith: Ray and I could not afford our own home at today’s prices).
So what can Alice do? The point of Forum Theatre is to inspire people to become “actively involved in society”. The audience is invited to intervene when they spot an opportunity to change course – so you can find yourself on stage which is much less scary and more fun than you might imagine. But also frustratingly difficult to do any better than poor disillusioned Alice.
Who could refuse? Gavin Crichton invites members of the audience to get involved in Changeduring the election campaign
At the dress rehearsal I am probably the only member of the audience who is not a student of community theatre. I have delivered too many election leaflets not to know that Alice should not start her campaign by knocking on doors – you are as welcome as a Jehovah’s Witness when you cold-call on people just home from work, interrupting their evening meal or the football match on telly.
A recurring line – “it’s the council’s job but you know how the council is” – reminds me how many highly intelligent people simply do not know how the system works, the name of their MSP or councillor, or how to contact them.
Learning the system: Ola and Maka shadow their local MSP, Malcolm Chisholm, through Opening Doors shadow scheme.
Power to the People aims to provoke questions about the meaning of power. I leave the performance feeling more than ever that knowledge is the main route to power. A successful campaign depends on knowing where power lies and how to lobby decision makers; gathering popular support means knowing how to talk and listen to people. It takes endless dedication and even more time.
Anyone for the Big Society? Such questions, and more, are the stuff of Forum Theatre. It will be interesting to see what interventions the real audience makes when Power to the People opens to the public on Sunday. Then maybe I could invite them to join the Opening Doors shadow scheme to find out how the system works.
PERFORMANCES (all free):
Sun 21st Nov 2010, 3pm, The Out of the Blue Drill Hall, Dalmeny Street, Leith
Who says multicultural Britain is broken? On Facebook I am invited to a ‘Migrant Drop In Night’ where an open stage invites migrants, travellers, refugees and local people to celebrate Edinburgh “As a welcoming & safe environment; where all new arrivals feel empowered, accepted & integrated & able to contribute to our community.”
It’s a generous idea and it makes me think how lucky Edinburgh is to attract talented, hardworking and warmhearted newcomers like the young Polish group who started Swietlica, the monthly drop in club, and are now setting up Welcome Home. And of course they are not the only community making efforts to integrate.
Up side streets and behind closed doors there is an exciting diversity to Edinburgh that is perhaps just becoming more visible in the city. Through my involvement in a small voluntary community group in Leith, I have begun to travel the globe. To Ethiopia for a coffee morning (in the Africa Centre in Blackfriar’s Street), to Hong Kong for Chinese tea and incredible cakes (in a sheltered home just off Gorgy Road), to Tanzania for supper celebrating independence (in a Newhaven social club ), to Poland for a traditional Christmas meal of nine courses and no booze (in a Ferry Road community centre). To Pakistan and India for a night of poetry and very good samosas (in McDonald Road library).
Smell the coffee: Ethiopian style
I really had no idea what we were letting ourselves in for when we sent out the first Open Space invitation asking Can We Listen to Each Other. In 2005 a small group of Labour party members had decided we must try to do something (strictly non-party political) to challenge the increasing hostility to ‘visible minorities’ after the London bombings. The results (recorded on Leith Open Space blog) have opened my eyes to the challenges and opportunities of a multicultural society.
Of course there are problems (language is a barrier and it doesn’t help that there is not enough public money invested in overcoming it) though I am often struck by the irony that Britain accepts cultural invasion from the west (Starbucks, McDonalds, KFC. Coca Cola) with often disastrous health effects yet fears eastern influences (though they have much to teach us about family cohesion).
It takes effort to integrate but that also has to involve more than the incoming cultures. My own personal experience is that the effort is immensely rewarding. I have met some fantastic people – most of them women – and eaten some wonderful food. In fact, as you can see, food is a recurring theme in my multicultural experiences. There is no better way of bringing people together.
Launching World Kitchen in Leith on Gala Day 2009
Which is why the World Kitchen in Leith is such a good idea. Last night I sat in a Leith flat and marvelled at the cultural mix of the group: Spanish, Indian, African, Scots and Irish – we were all speaking the same enthusiastic language. There was one man, Gurmit, in a Sikh turban, who saw Leith Festival as an opportunity to break down the invisible barriers that give multiculturalism a bad name.(that story is on Leith Open Space blog too).
And of course breaking down barriers is what the Migrant Drop In Night is about. I am looking forward to Welcome Home (and maybe a cake or two).
Not many people saw it, but last night was a good night for community action. While would-be leaders dominated the television screen, a political drama was quietly unfolding in a Leith community centre which confounds all those fears of immigrants.
Members of Swietlica at the first performance of Change, a play timed to coincide with the election campaign. Picture by Kasia Raszewska
This is where campaigning politicians ought to be. Here’s community spirit in action in the Fort Community Wing where the Polish drop-in club, Swietlica, works tirelessly to bring people together – celebrating Christmas and St Andrews Night, fundraising for good causes, and sometimes throwing parties just for the fun of it.
So it wasn’t surprising that Swietlica hosted the first production of a brave new drama by the Leith community activist theatre group,ACTive Inquiry. Change is a political play (that’s political with a small p) exploring what change means and how we can make it happen. This is deliberately timed to coincide with the election campaign.
And it wasn’t surprising that the small audience representing Scottish, Polish, Indian and English communities wholeheartedly entered into the spirit of a form of theatre which demands audience participation. Elsewhere, across the UK, the media was doing its best to stir up ill-informed fear and resentment of strangers, feeding on Gordon Brown’s unscripted reactions to Gillian Duffy’s East European question. Inside a small Edinburgh primary school, some of those strangers were showing just why Leith is possibly the most vibrant and interesting part of Scotland’s capital.
The play ended with a competition for a project to change real life for the better. And the clear winners of a small cash prize to make it happen were Maria and Marek for an idea that costs almost nothing to put into action. The other two ideas were good too: a leaflet campaign to promote a club for single mothers and a public event to excite support for pedestrianising The Shore in Leith. And they could still happen. But on an old fashioned show of hands most votes went to the smiles.
Smiling Leith simply asks everyone to smile three times a day to a complete stranger. Try it, urged a smiling Maria and Marek, it can make you and someone else feel happier. “I don’t mean a grin,” adds Maria, “I mean a smile from the heart.” (They won £50 towards a poster campaign to make it happen).
I got home just in time to catch the end of the leaders’ debate. It seemed more contrived and controlled than ever. Perhaps saddest of all, not one of them seem able to risk speaking from the heart to acknowledge the great benefits of immigration. Maybe we should invite Mrs Duffy to meet the wonderful volunteers of Swietlica. And watch a performance of Change by ACTive Inquiry. (see more on Leith Open Space)
Audience participation: Mridu, Marek and Marcin (standing) accept a challenge to change the course of events in the play.
Welcome to Broughton Street, open for business despite the tramworks. It’s the place to come whether you want a leisurely meal or a quick coffee, whether you are looking for upmarket sausages or good wines, second hand books or frilly knickers, organic fruit, vegetables or ( ahem) erotica. On a wet March morning there is a buzz in the air but a big cloud on the horizon. Tesco Express is coming.
Despite letters of protest from local MSPs, city councillors, businesses, heritage groups and residents such as myself, the city council planning committee has approved Tesco Express Group plans for Picardy Place.
On paper the plans look harmless: a new shop front in Picardy Place and ‘plant louvres’ at the back in Broughton Street Lane. My objection (as I wrote for the excellent Broughton Spurtle) was based on evidence of what happens to an area once Tesco moves in – when local shops close a sense of community often dies with them.
Even so, the planning committee could find no reason to reject Tesco’s plans because they were deemed no threat to the fabric and appearance of a listed building in the World Heritage Site (those ‘plant louvres’ being the huge metal sheets that disguise stuff like ventilation). There is currently nothing in planning regulations that permits the committee to consider measurable damage to local businesses or less easily measured quality of life.
In fact, it did not even go to committee despite cross-party opposition. As Angela Blacklock a local Labour councillor explains:
“Every Councillor from the Central and
Leith Walk ward put out a joint statement opposing Tesco’s planning
application but our comments were not ‘material’ to the application
which was very straight forward and with Council policy and so it went
through without going to committee.”
Where does that leave local traders? Thanks to Tesco there is now a Broughton Street Traders Association but they are resigned to the inevitable. “Tesco is off the agenda”, says Patrick Crawshaw of the Bakehouse, an active founding member along with Lucy Tanat-Jones of Organic Pleasures (which does not sell fruit and veg as my pal Celia innocently supposed).
The traders association is now concentrating on creating a website to promote every shop in the street – raising awareness of the wonderful diversity of the ‘village’ – so they can take advantage of council plans for Picardy Place developments, whatever and whenever that may be.
Open for business? Quirky independent shops and quality traders like Crombie’s are likely to survive the numbing blandness of cut-price ‘convenience’ shopping. But small corner shops near the top of Broughton Street are vulnerable. I hope we can mobilise public support for a campaign to change Scottish planning regulations (click here for the Friends of the Earth campaign in England and Wales) and monitor the effects of Tesco on the local shops.
After all Tesco would not be coming here at all if small shops had not proved there is money to be made in the area. As they say: ‘every little helps’.
So far the trees are still there: a splash of green between grey buildings in a grey street. Otherwise only cars and traffic signs add colour to one of the posher parts of Edinburgh. Planning permission for a new building on the ‘unfinished’ edge of the tenement threatens the trees. I am printing a protest poem by Gordon Peters, one of the neighbouring residents, because it says so clearly what I feel: city life is also about what happens in the space between buildings. Why fill every gap?
In both poetry and prose Gordon Peters has supported a campaign against a decision to build a new home in Hart Street. The Planning Committee gave permission anyway to Richard Murphy, an architect whose work includes Dundee Contemporary Art Centre, and whose practice aims to produce “architecture equally of its place and of its time”.
The no-hopers who post comments on local newspaper websites interpreted the protests as opposition to any modern building in the elegant New Town. But you only have to read the articulate summary of the Hart Street Resdent’s case to see that is not the point at all. Here is a brief extract:
‘ The New Town was built with the intention of there being open space, trees & gardens; allowing new houses to be crammed into little gaps between Georgian buildings & onto small gardens is undermining the style & quality of the original plan. There is no shortage of housing or office space in Edinburgh’s New Town area; indeed there is a forest of estate agents’ signs offering property for sale or rent. Why was planning permission granted without there being a genuine, long-term need for development; & what is the result?’
I heard Gordon read his poem at a party and asked if I could publish it on my blog. Intriguingly just a few days later I saw the poem pinned to the wall of another architects’ office – Gaia Architects – who just happen to occupy the old Hugenot Monastery at the back of the gardens where the trees grow. I was there on totally different business, to gather information about inspiring and sustainable use of timber in innovative new Scottish architecture, so we didn’t talk about the campaign. Besides, the poem is not about the building. It’s about the tree – and what green space gives to the city. Since I took these pictures there is just a little less green as the cotoneaster and ivy have been cut down, perhaps in preparation for next year’s building. The poem raises doubts about the future of the trees:
Tenement Tree
In blossom or leaf, or russet or bare,
you stand as a sentinel, one of a pair;
your sister along is safer a bit
though developer’s shovel would spew her with grit.
No harm have you done but only sustain
life all around as you drink in the rain,
your listing is said to hold off the axe,
but not from a Council whose ethics are lax.
You’ve heard the yells of women haunted
sheltered Huguenots not wanted,
seen the proud elm yield to the saw,
kept blackbird and squirrel in your maw;
a doomed pigeon you kept on stance
as the peregrine struck just like a lance;
while brambles and currants beside bore fruit,
guarding the tenement you took root.
Enlightened city had let you be
till Mammon’s grasp said ‘damn the tree’;
the planning officer did his best
neighbours rallied, to the provost a pest;
but burgesses whose icon is a tram
determined to build seeing gold in a pan,
yet recession’s cold draft would see gold turn to dust
and you dear tree saved, to await further lust.
Gordon Peters April 2009 [you can hear Gordon at local poetry 'slams' in The Strathmore in Iona Streeet Leith. Check The Skinny and The List for details]
Just for the record, I did write a letter to Edinburgh’s Head of Planning to register my concern over Tesco’s plans to open a new store at 8 Picardy Place. As it happens I wrote it the same day I went to see the Edinburgh premiere of the Age of Stupid. Make of that what you will.
By the time I posted the letter I didn’t have much hope that it would make any difference. But I had discovered the power of Twitter. Greener Leith supportively tweeted my Facebook rage against the mighty Tesco and suddenly there was a flow of traffic to my blog that I am not at all used to. Some left comments, a few made very good points but to my amazement there was a depressing number in favour of the superstore colonising our neighbourhood. Or, almost as bad, couldn’t care one way or the other.
I have a new pessimism about the ways and wisdom of humanity since seeing the Age of Stupid and discovering that 60% of the population do not believe climate change is a man-made problem. With the chance of man-made solutions.
Can we stop Tesco dominating the landscape? I feel strongly that we can and must. But we will need to be quick. Letters to protest against yet another Tesco store in the Broughton area have to reach the council’s head of planning by 20 March. That’s just over a week to raise a campaign against wanton destruction of local character and independence.
Why on earth would we need another Tesco store in this area? There is already the Tesco supermarket at Canonmills and a Tesco Metro in Leith. But Britain’s biggest trade guzzler (Tesco reports pre-tax profits of £1.45bn) has swooped on the opportunity of Reid Furniture store closing in Picardy Place.
That’s a death threat to the diversity of local shops that give Broughton a real buzz and a true sense of place: Crombie’s one of the best butchers in Edinburgh, Mr Fishy, the Deli, and many small, friendly corner shops.
But we don’t have to let it happen. A campaign is already growing. On his way to the station this morning Ray was handed a flyer by the young man serving him in the newsagent. He emailed it to me from the train and said get blogging.
Our vigilant local newsletter, Spurtle, is also urging local residents to write to the council. According to the Spurtle message on the excellent new EH7 Noticeboard.
Tesco’s have applied for planning permission at 8 Picardy Place (Ref. 09/00385/FUL). They are intending the installation of a ‘shopfront to Picardy Place, plant louvres to Broughton St Lane, and interior fitout’ on 3 floors. The target determination date is 17 April 2009 so letters of objection will have to be sent in SOON.
Spurtle editor, Alan McIntosh, says they will not lead a campaign against Tesco but they will report (and therefore support) one and they have already alerted local city councillors, MPs and MSPs.
It’s not going to be easy. Tesco does not need to apply for change of use to open their store. But when people unite to combine well-informed argument with political weight they can stop the behemoth retailer in its tracks. A good cause for Greener Leith maybe?
The point about architectural heritage is worth making. We could campaign to develop Picardy Place so that it is a handsome gateway to the city centre. Better options for the old furniture store would be a new arts centre. Or how about a whole foods organic indoor market which would complement rather than compete with local shops?
Take a look at Whole Foods in Chicago for an example of style, substance and retailing success. Now, isn’t this an opportunity for Real Foods (crammed with good stuff but cramped) to expand into 21st century credit-crunch, climate change reality? Tesco should have no future in this environment.
[PS added 13 March: In response to the point made by Tony Leach I have removed my original opening sentence, referring to 'Tesco outrage' although I am still outraged at this real threat to the viability of our local independent shops. I will certainly write to MP MSPS and councillors using measured reasoning]
Harder than it seems, members of the audience get involved in 
Try it, urged a smiling Maria and Marek, it can make you and someone else feel happier. “I don’t mean a grin,” adds Maria, “I mean a smile from the heart.” (They won £50 towards a poster campaign to make it happen).
