Every now and then a surprised face peered through the window: this was not business as usual in the Scottish Parliament, not even during the Festival of Politics.  For once the emphasis was on actions rather than words.  And actions can speak volumes.

The News Group drama workshop chose to work on a topical story very much at the heart of the Scottish Parliament – US reaction to al-Megrahi’s continuing survival a year after his release and how that is being covered by the media.

This was a special festival version of the News Group presented by ACTive Inquiry with Leith Open Space.  The event was a sell-out – at 10.30 am on a Saturday too – and perhaps half the group were regulars from the monthly workshop sessions that take place in Pilmeny Youth Centre.   New members added a fascinating range of skills and experience to the event in the Education Centre at the parliament.

Gavin leads a warm-up exercise

Without words the group arranged ourselves according to the distance we had travelled to get to the parliament (Gavin Crichton, director of  ACTive Inquiry, does a great line in warm-up exercises as you can see from the photo).  The shortest journey was just a 10 minute walk but Lorna had crossed water to get there from Argyll and Thom had driven from Carluke.

Once the workshop began we covered a lot more ground – back in time and across the world: from Lockerbie to Libya, from the Berlin nightclub to the White House, searching and sifting through the layers of a complex story rarely tackled in the media. In silence the group expressed questions leading to more questions in a chain reaction spreading across the floor.

It’s not over yet. The workshop ended – as it always does – with suggestions for the actions our Jo (or Joe) the active citizen could take.  The top vote went to an idea which could take the drama to a wider stage.  Instead of calling for a judicial inquiry, the group would like to see “ a theatre-styled  public presentation of the Megrahi case”.   It’s an ambitious idea – but it would be a very exciting development for the Festival of Politics.   We hope we will come back to it!

The Top Three Action Points

1. Create a theatre-styled inquiry
2. Research every source to find the truth
3. Make an amateur video (in Lockerbie) on the subject of innocence and victimisation

Haven’t got the T shirt – yet – but we are preparing to be part of the Festival

OK, this is the Festival of Politics and yesterday the chamber was occupied by people who had come to hear Annie Lennox, Martin Bell and Mark Thomas discuss Power of the People. It was Mark Thomas who put the ideas to the vote: “Can I be a little cheeky?” he asked. And how was deputy presiding officer Alisdair Morgan going to refuse the man who has toured Britain collecting some wonderfully progressive ideas for his People’s Manifesto.

So anything can happen in the Festival of Politics. And on Day 5 – Saturday 21st to be precise – we are about to find out what lies in store when you invite people to bring the news stories that are making them mad to an experimental drama workshop.

Leith Open Space is joining ACTive Inquiry, the radical theatre group, to present News Group, a drama workshop exploring topical issues. The idea is to encourage people to take an active part in events rather than passively consuming all the media throws at us 24 hours of the day.  (In the monthly workshops we have grappled with the public sector cuts, the global response to the Haiti earthquake, and the Big Society.)

News Group uses drama techniques to analyse current affairs but it also employs Open Space democratic processes and everyone in the group is equally important. The Open Space process began with Harrison Owen, an American consultant who has specialised in mediation work with large and diverse groups. His work in Africa taught him that people communicate most freely when they sit in a circle where everyone has an equal chance to talk and listen.

Interestingly, at yesterday’s discussion in the debating chamber Mark Thomas also commented on the significance of the seating arrangement; the chamber’s  semicircular plan deliberately encourages consensus in contrast to Westminster’s  confrontational layout.

On the way out of the Parliament we took a quick peek in the Education Centre where the News Group takes place on Saturday.  It can fit a maximum of 30 people so it will be a tight circle if the room is full. But it will  expand to accommodate a world of news.  And who knows what will happen.

Flashback to last year: World Kitchen launched during the wet, wet Leith Festival Gala. This year we are going undercover!

There are moments in the early hours of the morning when we wake up and wonder how we got into this but after a good strong cup of coffee we are raring to go again.  First of all, World Kitchen in Leith promises to be a really exciting project during the Fringe, with lots of support from Out of the Blue Drill Hall Cafe.  But more of that after tomorrow’s planning meeting with the rest of the World Kitchen team.

And then a little later in August there’s the News Group drama workshop in the Festival of Politics.  Leith Open Space is really delighted to be working with ACTive Inquiry on a very different kind of event in this year’s varied programme at the Scottish Parliament.  Chris Berry the director did say he was hoping to encourage participants to blog on the Festival of Politics website, so we might just take him up on that.

So that’s us on Day 5 at 10.30 am in the Education Centre on Saturday 21 August.  News Group is a drama workshop – created by ACTive Inquiry in partnership with Leith Open Space – using drama techniques to dig below the surface of current issues.

It’s free and no acting experience is necessary. You just need to be willing to have a go. Instead of ranting at the telly, as Gavin Crichton artistic director of ACTive Inquiry puts it, this is an opportunity to explore how we can become active participants rather than passive consumers of non-stop news.

The News Group began last November and since then monthly workshops in Pilmeny Youth Centre have explored stories such as the war in Afghanistan, the Haiti earthquake, the BP oil disaster and the UK budget cuts. And who knows what the headlines will be during the third week in August.

ACTive Inquiry invited Leith Open Space to take part because there is a strong link between the community activism which is an essential element of their work and the community engagement of the Open Space discussion process.  Both   encourage people to take positive action and that   fits beautifully with this year’s Festival of Politics theme ‘Changing Politics’ ( if you are familiar with the work of ACTive Inquiry you will know that change has been very much part of the discussion in this year’s productions).

There is a special buzz around this year’s Festival of Politics with 47 events in the five day programme covering some of the most challenging issues of the moment. And in the Scottish Parliament too which gives a nice twist to discussion about the politics of ageing, football, food, human rights, climate change and much, much more.

Many of the events are free and the top price for tickets is only £6  if you book to see one of the stars – Annie Lennox talking about the Sing campaign fighting HIV/AIDS in South Africa, Mark Thomas on public involvement in politics or John Prescott on a life in politics.

This is the Edinburgh 2010 Inter-Faith Occasion for World Peace at 28 Great King Street and it offers the challenging title “World Faiths – Creating Peace Now”. Like other inter-faith events the programme covers a great deal of ground – from peace-making in the middle east to women’s peace work in Korea – but it is interesting to see that Thursday’s line-up reflects  what women bring to huge global challenges. Not least because many of the speakers are women.

It is great to see Nahid’s name on the list of speakers, covering a topic that has special relevance at a time when immigration is under a harsh spotlight.  The title of her talk is Peace in the City – Working for Integration.

The event, which starts at 7.30 pm on Thursday 1 July, is organised by Churches and Inter-Faith Peace Work of Uniting for Peace in association with Edinburgh faith communities.  For more information contact Rev Brian Cooper at Uniting for Peace on 0131 446 9545.

By the way, 38 Great King Street is the Edinburgh meeting place of the Theosophical Society – a probably little-known organisation which blends philosophy, science and comparative religions. According to Wikipedia the foremost aim is to form a nucleus of the universal brotherhood of humanity without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste, or colour. That alone  makes the venue worth exploring!

This is a marathon race with a difference.  Recycling, running, and constantly exploring innovative new ways to raise money – Leith-based voluntary organisation Multi-Cultural Family Base (MCFB) demonstrates an inspiring determination to maintain vital services despite public spending cuts. Perhaps you also have a story to tell?  Meanwhile over to Becky Robertson office manager at MCFB…

“With tough competition for seemingly ever decreasing pots of funding, everyone here at MCFB has pulled together to try and shore up the money coming into the organisation using the motto ‘every little bit counts’.

With a belief in the value of the projects that we run and work that we do here at MCFB, it feels like a worthwhile effort helping the organisation through these difficult economic times.  In addition to the main funding applications and alongside cost cutting and belt tightening across the organisation, here are just some of the money generating  initiatives we have put in place:

We have started a keen running club (helping with the belt tightening!), who between them have managed to bring in a tidy sum in sponsorship for various events – from running 5k’s dressed as Santa Claus to beating personal bests at half marathons. This has also meant we were able to give something back to one of our key funders, when several of the staff ran a mile for Sport Relief.

We have set up an account with the Recycling Appeal, which allows you to put all your empty toner cartridges & unwanted mobile phones to good use. Through this appeal, every item recycled can earn money for MCFB. Very simple to use, a single phone call or visit to www.recyclingappeal.com (quoting Multi-Cultural Family Base) allows you order a free collection. You can also access this link through MCFB’s website.

We now have an online donation service that can be accessed via the MCFB website (www.mcfb.org.uk) which is run in conjunction with Charity Choice (an online charity directory service) and the Co-operative Bank. This allows any donations to be made easily and securely into MCFB’s account via the Charity Choice website. Again, please let any friends, family & colleagues know who might be interested in this new service.

We are currently in the preliminary stages of setting up a social enterprise scheme selling art cards to help fund our much valued Art Therapy service. With a wealth of creative and artistic resources to hand, we felt this was the perfect opportunity to capitalise on them. So start thinking about your Christmas card order and watch this space…

These are challenging times for everyone, but hopefully they will bring out the best in all of us, revealing hidden talents, abilities and a social conscience along the way!”

Multi-Cultural Family Base (based at 50 Coburg Street in Leith)  aims to enhance the lives of vulnerable and disadvantaged children, young people and their families directly and through the education and training of students in caring professions.

What if we shut our doors to all the people traumatised by wars and persecution… would we live in a stable economy once we had selected our choice citizens?

A thought-provoking question is posed by Joyce Juma Phiri on a flyer advertising Edinburgh events during Refugee Week from 13-19 June.  With luck the events will provoke plenty of thought and action too.  Not least a film about young Afghan asylum seekers which could hardly be more topical.

In This World – showing at Tollcross Community Centre next Thursday 17 June– tracks the journey of two young Afghan asylum seekers from Pakistan across the Middle East and into the UK with the help of people smugglers.  It is a true-life award-winning documentary drama made by Michael Winterbottom (he of Cracker and Welcome to Sarajevo), featuring an asylum seeker, a market trader and a policeman.

With extra irony the young boy who played the part of asylum seeker, Jamal Udin Torabi, will be forced to return to Afghanistan when he reaches 18. (This film, made in 2002,  is newly topical with this week’s news that the new coalition government plans to deport 12 child asylum seekers back to Afghanistan every month.)

As always The Welcoming has drawn up a programme of events which are both truly welcoming and rightly challenging.  The week’s programme starts on Sunday with a film made more recently and much closer to home: A Long Way from Home showing at the Filmhouse on Sunday at 2.30pm – invites us to experience the problems of three asylum seekers from Columbia, Spain and Rwanda trying to make a new life in Scotland (The film, beautifully produced on a tiny budget by Pilton Video, was made by the refugee drama group IkaZe in collaboration with The Welcoming in 2008 and shown at the Red Eye film club last year).

Every year Refugee Week invites us to imagine what it must be like to seek a new life far from home and family.  This year The Welcoming rightly draws attention to the confusing issues of the economy, concern about immigration and the real hardship of refugees and asylum seekers (see the introduction by Joyce Juma Phiri, who came to Scotland as a refugee from Malawi and is now the Access and Inclusion Co-ordinator at Stevenson College in Edinburgh).

There is plenty more to see including A Sense of Place, an art and photographic exhibition opened by City of Edinburgh Councillors Joanna Mowat and David Becket at Tollcross Community Centre. And the week ends with a party and great music to raise money for Refugee Survival (see below).

The cafe was always a place where you could go and talk about changing the world. But now a bigger change is happening; something that requires less talk and more action…

Action points: there’s lots of exciting stuff simmering below the surface which we are not quite ready to tell you about. But one festival event is ready and raring to go public.  Don’t miss The Legacy the latest Flashback Drama Group production during Leith Festival on June 17, 18 and 19 in Out of the Blue Drill Hall.

Hot on the heels of Change, the election campaign drama series, ACTive INquiry presents a new work exploring how we deal with change and how we can be actively involved in enabling positive change to happen in our lives and communities.

As always this is a collaborative production, devised and written by the cast and directed by Gavin Crichton of ACTive INquiry, a Leith based theatre company with the declared aim of  encouraging participation in the arts as a catalyst for active involvement in society.

And where better to start than the cafe, as the Legacy flyer says: “The cafe was always a place where you could go and talk about changing the world. But now a bigger change is happening; something that requires less talk and more action.”

Legacy is on show at 7.30pm on 17th and 18th June and at 2.30 and 7.30 on Saturday 19th June in Out of the Blue Drill Hall, 36 Dalmeny Street Edinburgh EH6 8RG.  Tickets £5.

Politicians take note.  Sometimes the simplest ideas win the most hearts, minds and votes. Last night’s political drama in Fort Community Wing ended with a competition for a project to change life in Leith 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 nothing to put into action.  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. It certainly seemed to work a treat for the crowd who had come to see the first night of Change, a political (with a small p) play exploring how we can influence positive change in our community.

The other two proposals are also good ideas: a leaflet campaign to promote the club for young mothers at the Citadel and a public event to excite support for the Greenerleith vision for pedestrianising the Shore. And of course they can still happen.  But it was the smile that won the day when Gavin Crichton, the ACTive Inquiry director, asked the audience to take part in an old fashioned democratic show of hands. Smiling Leith wins £50 for a poster campaign to get everyone smiling.

Gavin spent the earlier part of the evening in the role of The Joker (see right) coaxing members of the audience on to the stage to play their part in changing events.  With amazing success.

On the way into the hall Mridu said she definitely did not want to get involved in audience participation. Guess who was first up on stage after Gavin asked the audience to suggest how the main character Sophie might have done things differently to secure her dream of running a community course encouraging local people to take more control of their lives.

On the other side of me Al confided his fear of being dragged on stage.  Guess who was next up? Al improvised a scene skillfully persuading the community centre manager that Sophie might find an alternative source of funding for her project. (Later Al admitted it was very close to the role he played in getting Greener Leith started).

Playing their part: Mridu Thanki (left) of World Kitchen in Leith and Al Tibbitt of Greener Leith with Suzanne of ACTive Inquiry as the harassed community centre manager.

And by the end of the play even Leith Open Space was drawn into the action, persuading the bank who employ Sophie that they could help to make the community project happen and restore some of their bad name at the same time.

Try it for yourself – Change made its debut at Fort Community Wing thanks to the wonderfully enterprising Swietlica drop-in club. The play is now running in different venues throughout Leith during the election campaign. Next showing at Duncan Place Resource Centre, 4 Duncan Place, Leith on Wednesday 5 May 7pm.

And don’t forget to smile – ‘Three smiles a day keeps misery away”, is the slogan suggested by Mridu for the Smiling Leith poster campaign which will be launched with the help of the £50 prize awarded by ACTive Inquiry. Who knows who and what will win the next prize.  Could be you?

Teamwork: Mridu, Marek and Marcin demonstrate people power (thanks to Kasia Raszewska for the black and white pictures)

PERFORMANCES

all free
Wednesday 5 May 7pm – Duncan Place Resource Centre, 4 Duncan Place, Leith
[Thursday 6 May – still to be confirmed – Out of the Blue, Drill Hall, Dalmeny Street, Leith]
Saturday 8  May 4pm – The Lighthouse, 20-22 West Harbour Road, Granton, EH5
(plus a private performance  at NEECAG (North East Edinburgh Care Action Group) Older People’s Forum, at a  sheltered housing complex).

Ben Stollery, actor and drama worker with ACTive Inquiry, explains:

At each performance we would like to make information available to the audience about local and city-wide organisations who are involved in positive social change and campaigning. The actors  will talk to members of the audience afterwards and point them in the direction of organisations engaged in areas of interest to them. We are also inviting local organisations to be available for audience members to speak to if they wish.

Audience members will be invited, as part of the performance, to form groups and to think of an idea for making positive change in Leith and to present a small proposal including what the idea is, what they would do with a small contribution from ourselves (up to £50), and how Active Inquiry can help with making the idea happen. The ideas will be voted on by the audience with the winner getting the small amount of money to give them a start.

Active Inquiry would also be involved with following this up and helping in any way we can.

We would therefore like to invite your organisation:

1. to send a representative to attend one or more of the performances, detailed below
2. to send some literature on your organisation, what it does and how people can get involved, for us to make available at each performance
3. to provide a 3-line summary about yourselves with contact details that we will add to a handout to be given to all who attend (or edit your portion of the attached draft handout)

Please send to Ben Stollery at 1F2, 50 Albion Road, Edinburgh EH7 5QU

For more information email  ben@activeinquiry.co.uk or phone Gavin Crichton artistic director on 07714 321629 or visit the ACTive Inquiry website by clicking here