Gentle Action Blog

A shop without staff

F. David Peat — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 14:00:35 +0000

Two years ago the local shop in Draughton, North Yorkshire, closed down. The village’s first move was to purchase a red telephone box and stock it with newspapers. The next step was to use it as a shop to sell groceries, pet food, batteries and stamps. The door is unlocked and it is stocked from a shop four miles away. Customers can phone in an order using a credit card or sending a check.

With no one inside running the shop, up to date nothing has been stolen.

Bus stop for the world cup.

F. David Peat — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 10:51:51 +0000

Some time ago I mentioned how the residents of one community had made their local bus stop into a mini community center with flowers and a chair. This time the story somes from Unst the northern most of the Scottish Shetland Islands.

The locals have been decorating their bus stop for year and even put up fairy lights that are powered by a generator to make it a tourist attraction.

For the Millennium celebrations they provided Earl Grey tea and sandwiches.

Now the Stop has been given a make over to celebrate the World Cup.

By a series of gentle actions the local have made their bus stop a major tourist attaction with its own website, Facebook page and visitor’s book!

Eight year old transforms a park

F. David Peat — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 10:25:02 +0000

Ryan Wells is an eight year old boy who was concerned about the state of his local part in Lee, South London. It was filled with litter, the paths were overgrown with weeds. It was also used by drug addicts land street drinkers who leeft their syringers and bottles. It was certainly not a place where Ryan and his friends would play since older youths prowled around the part with agressive dogs.

And so the eight year old boy borrowed his mother’s camera, shots documentary evidence of the state of the part and then wrote a letter to the Mayor in which he complained about the park and said “There are so many kinds around in the streets in my area on the pavement and in the road, some as young as five without their mum. I would like to give them somewhere to go”.

The result is that the Mayor has set asde £10,000 for a “general tidy up” and to improve the children’s play area.

But eight year old Ryan hasn’t stopped there. He is now applying for £50,000 grant from a lottery fund to build a BMX bike track in the park!

Giving a Lift

F. David Peat — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 09:22:51 +0000

Some Gentle Actions make a major change in society, others can be a simple act of kindness that can end up having an effect on a person’s life. I recently had an email from someone in Australia who would like to remain anonymous. She lives is a village outside Port Macquarie in New South Wales. It is a holiday spot with beautiful beaches and tourist attractions but also an area of many retired people. The only disadvantage is a poor bus service, with only four buses per day. Our correspondent has therefore made it a practice of stopping her can at these bus stops and offering to give elderly people a lift into town and drop them where they need to go. She is now planning to put up a notice in the local bakery offering a service to elderly and disabled people who need to got into town.

Art Action

F. David Peat — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 09:12:35 +0000

Simone Caramel has sent an example of transformative action in Argentina. Caminito (little path) was an area of Buenos Aires occupied mainly by European immigrants, many of them Italian, in the early decades of the Twentieth Century. It was also the place where the Tango was born. (Caminito Tango was composed in 1924.
But as the immigrant’s income improved they moved to other parts of Buenos Aires and the area became abandoned and was soon filled with crime. Then in the late fifties an artist, Benito Quinquela Martin, had the idea of painting the fronts of the houses in bright pastel colours. The effect was to revive the area. Bars, gift shops and restaurants opened and soon the area becama a mecca for tourists and today is very a lively area.

Society as womb

F. David Peat — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 09:11:45 +0000

Al Boag has sent his own reflections on society and what can emerge out of a moment of “creative suspension”. Back in 1980 Boag was half way through a doctoral program in Scotland when, while riding his bicycle to the university, he had a critical moment where everything stopped and his thinking changed in a radical way, causing him to abandon his thesis. One image that came to him was the idea of life in the womb, where biology provides everything to the developing baby. He related this to the utopian notion that the state should provide food, shelter and clothing as a citizen’s basic right. A Guaranteed Minimum Income would provide the security out of which a citizen could then find a way to contribute back to society. When Boag returned to Australia he went on unemployment benefits and retrained himself. The result was that he began to build frame houses. Today five houses have been provided for himself and others with a market value of $1.5 million. This, in Boag’s estimation, is a five-fold return on what the Australian government had invested in his unemployment benefits. Over the past twenty years Boag has been writing to politicians, social reformers, and policy theorists arguing that the provision of food, shelter, and clothing should be enshrined as basic rights.

A force for good

F. David Peat — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 12:22:24 +0000

Tony Manwaring, CEO of Tomorrow’s Company, believes that businesses can act as a force for good in the world. In particular they can come up with practical solutions to such things are poverty, human rights and environmental degradation. To learn more go to www.forceforgood.com and its accompanying blog.

Library in a Telephone Box!

F. David Peat — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 14:57:05 +0000

Residents of the village of Westbury-sub- Mendip in Somerset, England were upset when their mobile library was cancelled, since the nearest library is four miles away.

The residents’ solution was to purchase one of British Telecom’s famous “red phone boxes” for the sum of one pound. Wooden shelves were installed and the villagers donated books. The “library” is now open twenty four hours a day and has a rapid turn over.

Now other communities have decided to open their own local libraries and so far British Telecom has had 770 applications from communities to “adopt a box”

Rushing past a street musician.

F. David Peat — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 12:20:26 +0000

One January morning a man is playing a violin outside a Washington metro station as commuters rush by. While it is not unusual to pass by a street musician without bothering to listen or take notice, this was an exception. The musician was one of the world’s leading violinists, Joshua Bell, and he was playing Bach on an instrument worth $3.5 million!

The event was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people’s priorities. Very few people stopped to listen and Bell collected a total of $32.

One possible conclusion reached from this experiment could be that if we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world, playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ever made.
How many other things are we missing?

You can find the complete story at
http://bitsofwisdom.org/2009/10/21/interesting/perception/

Gentle Action at Siena Heights University

F. David Peat — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:03:52 +0000

Linda Easley wrote to let me know that she is using “Gentle Action” as a course book at Siena Heights University in Adrian, Michigan.

We look forward to hearing from the students who are invited to post on this Blog.