FIDELMA MEEHAN is the Co-ordinator for the Swindon Bahá'í community. Her Faith speaks of the need for spiritual fulfilment in today’s society and she holds regular ‘Tranquillity Zones’ to allow people to escape from the pressures of life. Today, she explains why she supports the Evening Advertiser’s Spirit of Swindon campaign to involve the community in the town’s new bid for city status.

Swindon’s city status bid will be a turning point for our town.

And it won’t be because we have spent thousands of pounds on a glossy booklet, nor because of our outstanding economic achievements. But it will be the Spirit of Swindon that wins the day.Who can forget that leaked report from the Home Office, when our town’s city status bid was criticised for being too materialistic and lacking the most important element of all – the spirit? Although our bid presented strong evidence of an exciting and economically booming town, it seems that concentrating too much on our economic success story may have been our downfall. After all, who would want Swindon to be a city based on material and economic growth alone?

In his book The Earth is But One Country, John Huddlestone says that today’s cities can become a hell on earth, a sad contrast with the ancient dream of the city as the centre of refinement and culture, the pride of civilisation.

Huddlestone describes some of the all-too-familiar spiritual sicknesses suffered in major cities:

The Evening Advertiser’s inspirational Spirit of Swindon campaign will ensure that we get a more balanced bid this time round – a people’s bid, driven by the spirit of the people of this town. Only if we get this bit right can we avoid the pitfalls suffered by other cities.

But we must not allow this visionary campaign to end on the day we hand our bid to the Home Office, nor should it end when we become a city. The campaign is a golden opportunity for the people of the town to consult with our community to decide on what kind of city we want to be – and how we can work together to make it special. We have done this in the past. This town has been built on the pioneering spirit of men and women who turned Swindon into a world famous railway town. Their achievements will be remembered by generations to come, thanks to the Steam Museum.

But do we want to leave this spirit in the museum with Swindon’s past? Or use that pioneering spirit today to help build a city that can become a leading light – one that cares not only for material development and well-being but also for spiritual development and well-being of all its citizens. If we allow ourselves to ignore the spiritual dimension of life in our city, wouldn’t we become like every other big city and suffer the same spiritual sicknesses afflicting our society?

Swindon will thrive and truly prosper as a city only if we acknowledge the spiritual dimension in human nature, and make the moral, emotional, physical and intellectual development of every individual a priority. There is much evidence to support the need for this approach. For example, in the projects initiated by the local Bahá'ís, we have found that thousands of people in Swindon, irrespective of religious belief, are looking for a spiritual dimension in their lives.

Our experience of projects such as the Tranquillity Zone and the Youth Empowerment Project shows that the campaign for the Spirit of Swindon is very relevant to the lives of the people of this town and will hopefully help us achieve city status. But, more importantly, the bid may help us develop that essential spiritual dimension that will transform Swindon into a truly prosperous city, where prosperity will be understood to mean both economic and spiritual well-being.