Movers & Shakers: 100,000 Thank Yous!

Creative campaigners made the Parky Petition fly

On Wednesday evening we saw our campaign to get 100,000 signatures for our Parky Charter petition pass that milestone weeks sooner than we had imagined possible. On Thursday afternoon Gillian Lacey-Solymar, who knows the importance of celebrating a big win, invited some of the people who made that possible to a tea and Prosecco party in her London garden. This week’s special edition of Movers and Shakers, recorded at the party, is a ‘thank you’ card to everybody who badgered friends, relatives and complete strangers to sign up to our manifesto for better Parkinson’s care.

Linda Clarke - front, second from left - campaigning in Bexhill

People like Linda Clarke, who propelled Bexhill-on-Sea to the top of the leaderboard in the contest to find the place that could collect the most signatures. Among the ideas she and her regular Parkinson’s physio group came up with was a QR code that would take people direct to the petition website: “I emailed it to the Movers and Shakers and said could they possibly use this to help gain signatures?

The QR code made it simple for me to bag these five in Cambridge

We of course said yes and, once we realised it was a tool to target the younger generation, we had great success with it. But Linda was already trying it out in Bexhill, getting her husband, a retired printer, to put the QR code on leaflets: “That didn't always go that well, because I think people think you're after their money, whereas we really want just their name. But over the last few months, we've been raising awareness, and every time we gain signatures, I've put an article in the (local) paper.” By using this combination of new and old media, Linda got more than 500 signatures in Bexhill, a feat nowhere else has matched so far.

Then there was Anna Edwards who at the end of June became a woman with a mission - to collect as many signatures as possible from the people queuing for tickets for the Wimbledon tennis tournament. That didn’t work too well at first and she found herself inside the grounds where evryone was focused on tennis, strangely. But it was at a campsite that she struck gold:

“This is the campsite of people who pitch up early in the morning to queue for next day's tickets. And they were amazing. They were such a kind lot., hey're just sitting there with their drinks by their tent, and they've got time on their hands, and that is exactly what I needed.” Every conversation ended with Anna asking the signer if they had a kind friend they could also get to sign, a tactic Anna feels almost doubled her impact.

But she admits that on the way to the party she had felt relieved that the pressure was now off: “For the first time, I could sit on the tube without chatting to someone, without having to bother someone with ‘do you mind doing this? Have you got two minutes for me?’”

It was when Liz Houghton arrived at the party that we really felt in the presence of social media royalty. It was Liz’s TikTok about the petition that put a rocket under it in the first week of July.

She explained that she mainly used TikTok to recite her poems - “they all rhyme” - and was happy if they got a couple of dozen views. But she had been an active campaigner on Parkinson’s - she was diagnosed 11 years ago - for quite a while and was passionate about rallying people in her home town of Bedford behind the petition.

Then she read an article I wrote where I mused about what it would take to make our campaign go viral. Stepping out of the shower she thought quickly about what she wanted to say - and went for it. Afterwards, she was in two minds about posting it on TikTok:

“I can only call it horrific, pretty ghastly, when I played it back, with me letting rip and showing my emotional side….. And I thought, do we want to post that? I asked my social media mentor, Lucy, and she said, ‘yes, why not?’”

They posted it at lunchtime and by that evening, it had had 2,500 views - many times what she was used to getting for here poems. But it was late that night that it really took off: “By the morning, there was this massive number. I thought, what's happening? It's gone viral!”

There were all sorts of other people not at the party who put energy and creativity into the campaign to get to that 100,000 target. Just one example - the children of Bob Sandlan, who was diagnosed with early onset Parkinson’s last year, have been tireless in posting on social media about the petition.

To be a part of this campaign and see it succeed so rapidly has been hugely energising. But, as we say at the end of this week’s podcast, we are not just going to sit back and say ‘job done.’ We are going to redouble our efforts to promote the Parky Charter and in particular to explain it to MPs while we wait for a debate. Oh, and the petition remains open until September 10th - do keep signing!