Posted on behalf of the Kindness Festival:
If you’re feeling cold, broke or blue, and finding it hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel, Frome has a suggestion for you: take part in a Kindness Festival. As scientific research proves*, kindness is the quiet super-power that becomes all the more important when times are tough.
Since the beginning of the year, the volunteer Kindness Crew have been coming together on Sunday afternoons over steaming mugs of hot chocolate to plan the town’s second Kindness Festival. Taking place from 5th – 11th March 2023, the festival aims to bring together young and old to celebrate, practice and explore the power of kindness to improve mental and physical health, transform relationships and strengthen communities.
Each day of the festival has a kindness-related theme, and events range from a Caravan of Kindness to a West Country afternoon tea with Radio 4 presenter Claudia Hammond. There will be a debate about Kindness in Social Media, a film extravaganza, and clothes swaps for children and adults, including a catwalk where eco-conscious shoppers can be photographed in their new outfits. On the streets there will be live music, pop-ups and a flash mob featuring a specially commissioned kindness dance. The Boyle Cross in the centre of the town will be decorated with a super-sized hat that encourages passers-by to “put your kindness hat on.”
A new feature for 2023 is the Kindness Challenge, which invites local schools, businesses, families and friends to make the festival their own by devising and carrying out actions – both big and small, seen and unseen – that share the transformative power of kindness. Challenges already pledged include growing pots of bulbs to put in food bank parcels, reading aloud in local schools, and putting cheerful notes on all the bus stops. The Town Hall, local library and Frome Sports & Fitness are among the many organisations taking part. At the end of the festival the challenge will be celebrated with a big party and an exhibition at the Town Hall.
“Frome is already full of kindness, but there’s always scope for more – particularly towards the people that we don’t feel close to” says Alison Murdoch, founder of The Good Heart, the local non-profit behind the Kindness Festival. “The scientific evidence is that simply watching someone else doing something kind can set a ripple of positive change in motion. As Aesop said: No act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted.”
* Kindness is scientifically proven to lower our blood pressure, improve our heart-health and stimulate the production of serotonin. It can increase life span, bring about a happy marriage, and help to retain employees. Even witnessing an act of kindness can produce the same effect as carrying one out. “It is a little embarrassing that, after forty-five years of research and study, the best advice I can give to people is to be a little kinder to each other,” said Aldous Huxley.
