IN AUGUST 2011, Bernadette Russell pledged to do a kind act for a stranger every day for a year.

This simple project has grown to become a phenomenon, and then a movement, and is now a show, 366 Days Of Kindness which is to be performed at Poole Lighthouse tonight.

The multimedia show tells the heartbreaking, surprising and challenging stories of 2011, which began with burning buildings and ended with the flame of the Olympic torch. Russell started the project after the momentous summer riots and soon received positive response and attention.

She said: “2011 was quite a memorable year for the country. It was bookended by this incredibly negative and this incredibly positive experience, both made possible by the same groups of young people. This was just my way of responding to what seemed like an incredibly depressing, horrible, negative, overwhelming thing.”

Her encounters with strangers have been incorporated into the show, which is a retrospective of the whole project.

Russell describes it as a mixture of different genres, part stand-up, part documentary, part light-hearted lecture.

She said: “I don’t want anyone to worry they’re going to come and have someone shout at them about being nice and how nice they are, it’s not like that. I open the show by telling people that I’m not very nice.”

So, inspired a little, I ask Russell how we can start doing our own random acts of kindness.

“Smiling at everyone or saying ‘Hello’ to everyone for a day is a small but quite powerful thing.

“When you do it you realise how much you’ve never done it before, and how much it improves your day.

“Its little things like that – looking around you and seeing someone who needs a hand with their luggage or their washing.”

“Being shy isn’t a barrier – I’ve done things like if I’m in a cafe I’ve written a little note on a serviette saying: ‘That was a really nice cup of coffee, thanks for looking after me and have a nice day.’”

The show includes filmed interviews with some of the people who she helped, as well as the acts of kindness themselves.

Featuring a dinner party with surprise guests including the Dalai Lama, Liam Neeson and Princess Diana, the performance attempts to answer the question: is it possible to change the world just by being kind?

366 Days of Kindness will show at the Lighthouse tonight at 8pm and tickets are £10, available from lighthousepoole.co.uk.