During Frequency Festival 2019, author, storyteller, kindness campaigner and theatre maker, Bernadette Russell, walked the streets of Lincoln and chatted with people about how they would like care to be now and in the future. Here is the result, in which Bernadette has tried to honour everyone’s thoughts, questions and ideas. It’s a co-created, carefully constructed architecture of hope, declaring our plans and actions for building a better, more caring tomorrow.
“On a rainy weekend in October 2019, during Frequency Festival, I walked the streets of Lincoln, to chat to people about care. I sat with strangers on orange plastic chairs in charity shops and on velvet cushioned wooden chairs in hotel dining rooms, I sat in cosy vegan cafes and on a damp bench on the High Street, I spoke to the recently widowed, to octogenarians in rude health, and to thoughtful teenagers. I spoke with all of these people about care, and asked what they wanted care to look, sound, feel, taste, smell like in the future and now. This manifesto contains the gathered thoughts and sayings of those I met that weekend. It is in part a list of wants. It’s the words and music of a song for us to sing together, composed of thoughts, complaints, dreams, hopes, frustration, anger, memories. It’s a collage of borrowed words and pictures from half remembered daydreams, an article in an out of date magazine found in a doctor’s waiting room, and a dusty photograph album nobody’s had out for years.”
Bernadette Russell
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