alendi at the West Wiltshire Show - 2007

The West Wiltshire Show takes place in Trowbridge park once every two years. We took our geodesic dome tent to the show in July 2007 in order to promote Human Givens, to network with local organisations and advertise to local people know that we are now working in Trowbridge.

The tent provides a great space for our information stand and attracts people who are interested in the tent itself as well as the therapy. It is also a calm and relaxed environment for those occasions when a little privacy is required - when people start to open up about things which are bothering them.

We had a busy three days with plenty of visitors although the the first day, Thursday, was extremely wet with almost constant rain throughout the whole day. One of the posters we designed featured ripples on a calm lake - which was intended to represent the calm state of mind which our therapy can deliver. Little did we realise that it would turn out to be a fairly accurate description of what you had to cross in order to reach our tent! Luckily the organisers quickly arranged for several lorry loads of wood chips to be sourced from nearby Longleat Estate and after shifting several wheel-barrow loads to the quagmire in front of our tent, we had relatively mud-free access.

Everyone was affected by the constant rain and wind and some of the stands housed under lightweight gazebos closed early due to the conditions. We laughed when an announcement was made over the tannoy system informing us that the Bath sub-aqua group stand had closed early due to the excessive water!

Our resident artist, Laurie Stansfield, had been hard at work before the show designing a character which could display a wide range of emotions. This was inspired by the presentation given by Chris Dyas at the 2007 Human Givens conference in which he used a set of bear cards to show emotions without recourse to words. We used some of her images on a poster and had one woman who came into the tent saying "I feel like every one of those pictures - I must need help!".

The weather picked up for the Friday and Saturday and each day was busier than the previous one. On Saturday morning Alec was interviewed live on the local radio and used the opportunity to talk about the Human Givens approach to mental health.

There were a large number of family groups at the show. We provided stickers for children in return for them saying the best thing about themselves and the best thing about their mum or dad. We placed their words on our display wall and over the three days collected an impressive list of positive affirmations. I was particularly amused by the child who wrote that the best thing about her mother was that she "lets me help".

Sometimes parents wanted to chat to us, so to keep children happily occupied we provided coloured pencils and patterned templates with the promise that any completed patterns would be placed on this website after the show.

We visited the stands of other organisations such as Amber who help unemployed young people, The Shaw Trust which is a national charity that provides training and work opportunities for people who are disadvantaged in the labour market due to disability, ill health or other social circumstances, React who are a dynamic charity working to improve the quality of life for financially disadvantaged children with life-limiting illnesses living in the UK, The local Volunteer Centre based at Bridge house and the local Carers Support group.

There were also stands for a variety of complementary therapists including Chiropractors, Reflexologists and the Inspiration Holistic Centre in Bradford on Avon.

We had a great time at the show. We handed out many copies of our new therapy brochure and it was a nice surprise to see that this website achieved its highest ever number of hits in a single week.

The West Wiltshire Show is only held once every two years but we will be sure to be at the next one.

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Last updated Fri 7 Mar 2008