Hot Air Debates - Med Theatre

WIND FARMS ON DARTMOOR?

YES: 70 votes NO: 58 votes ABSTAIN: 13 votes

COMMENTS FROM VOTERS

An aspect of the community play HOT AIR was an interactive debate with characters from the play, allowing the audience to exercise their understanding of a proposed wind farm site on Dartmoor. The play drew out many issues to do with climate change and sought to ask questions rather than provide answers. The debate not only involved the audience in the discussion but also provided a framework for raising awareness of our thoughts and feelings about climate change and the challenges it places on our daily lives. The fictional character, Dominic, led the debate as a journalist consulting the local community. Dominic took a vote at the end of the discussion to gauge how the community felt about the wind farm. The results of the vote were very interesting, but the main purpose was to open up discussion.

The vote was performed six times and was often very close, on one night the difference being only a vote or two. Above is the tally of the votes people wrote down on feedback forms. The “yes” vote won but only by a margin, particularly when abstentions are taken into account. At one performance the very issue of abstention was discussed by the audience. As can be seen from the comments (see links above) reasons varied, but often people felt they required more information. We hope that people have been sufficiently inspired to find out more…