Look for the hook

Project pushes the right buttons to motivate Londoners What will help persuade seven million Londoners to tread more lightly on the earth? Speaking their many languages, says London Sustainability Exchange (LSx), whose mission is to turn the capital - where one in three residents is from black and minority ethnic groups (BMEs) - into a world class sustainable city. LSx’s Motivate London project kicked off in Turkish with a series of plays written to bring alive environmental issues, from recycling to saving water. The productions, performed by two leading Turkish Cypriot comedians and a performing arts group in the Turkish communities of Palmer’s Green and Catford, seemed to capture the imagination of the audience. With theatre, “you can visualise things that you can never grasp from reading a newspaper article 10 times. You can still tell someone else about this play five years later,” said one man, confirming LSx’s hunch that it would hit the spot better than the newspaper articles it also commissioned on the subject. Other pointers from the focus groups are that more Turkish men than women read newspapers, but if you’re trying to target the individuals that tend to run the household, you’ve got to get women involved too. LSx is planning to use drama again to help make the link between faith and the environment for London’s Muslims, in a season of plays to be specially broadcast during Ramadan, the Islamic time of reflection. But “a one-size-fits-all approach just won’t work in cities like London”, points out project manager Paula Smith. Which is why LSx is currently designing grassroots projects to touch 10 specific BME communities and faith groups across the capital. As well as finding the right hook for each of them, LSx will be magnifying its message through the city’s key influencers. Not just your usual sustainability professionals, but also the much less likely suspects who are ideally placed to trigger change through their business, faith or ethnic community. “We’ll be talking to everyone from imams and pastors to Chinese takeaway owners and business leaders… helping them to drive forward the message.” - Hannah Bullock

21 July 2005

Hannah Bullock