I’m slightly terrified that nobody will come to my event. Which is an odd thing to admit when you’re trying to promote an event.
I’ve given myself about two weeks to get 25 people to sign up for the first Love Our Island Experience, and there’s now a small part of my brain imagining myself standing beside a sauna by the sea with 24 empty spaces and a slightly bruised ego.
This is the bit nobody really talks about when they tell you to “build in public”. It’s quite easy to have an idea but it’s another thing entirely to make a video of the idea, inviting people and then waiting to see if anyone actually turns up. But I wanted to try it anyway.
One of the reasons I started Love Our Island was because I kept finding myself picking up rubbish in Cyprus. Usually on my own with a bag and a litter picker for an hour or two. And there are already people doing much bigger organised clean-ups here. The Island Keepers and City Group, for example, are getting people together and doing genuinely, incredibly positive work.
So I don’t really want Love Our Island to become another project that organises litter picks. Not because litter picks aren’t useful. They are. But they solve the immediate problem. You pick up the bottle. The beach looks better. Then someone throws another bottle down and a week later it’s the same.
The more interesting puzzle, to me, is why they felt comfortable doing it in the first place and how can we stop it? That’s a much harder problem.
I believe you can’t pick your way out of a culture of littering. You have to change behaviour and behaviour changes slowly. Culture changes even more slowly. Which is where I’ve started thinking about something slightly less tangible: connection.
If you like somewhere, you tend to look after it. If you know people who care about somewhere, perhaps you care a little more too and in a world where an increasing amount of our social lives happen through a rectangle in our hands, I think there’s still something rather powerful about getting people together in the real world. Actually meeting and talking. Doing something slightly ridiculous together. Then telling someone else about it afterwards.
Word of mouth isn’t dead. In fact, in a relatively small population like Cyprus, it could be incredibly powerful. So, that’s what I’m experimenting with.
On 26 September, from 4pm-7pm, I’m hosting the first Love Our Island Experience.
We’ll do a short clean-up, but the clean-up isn’t really the point. I’ll talk a bit about Love Our Island and where I’d love to take it, hopefully have some feedback too. Then we’ll have a sauna by the sea, a swim and watch the sunset at one of my favourite places in Cyprus.
The exact location is being kept secret until you sign up, but it’s somewhere near Limassol. I want to keep it small so there are only 25 places. It’s completely free, although donations are welcome, and I have no idea whether anyone will come.
If it works, I’d like to do more. Different excuses for people to get outside, meet each other and experience a bit more of the island. Because maybe that’s one way you change behaviour. Not by telling people to care but by giving them more, tangible, reasons to care.
That, ultimately, is what I’m hoping to build with Love Our Island. Not just a campaign. Not just a logo. And definitely not a man wandering around Cyprus with a bin bag – although there will probably still be quite a lot of that.
Saturday 26 September, 4–7pm, somewhere near Limassol.
25 places.
Sauna. Sea. Sunset. A little bit of litter picking.
And hopefully some good people.
I’d love to see on there.