A crucial vision of the project was to help people not only express their complaints and channel that energy in a different, creative way, but to examine and view the complaints in a more positive light, and maybe start to occasionally 'smile at their neighbours'. People are challenged by their frequent tendency to negatively complain through taking part. The powerful act of people coming together to sing about and share their complaints in unison, whether everyone in the choir can relate to them or not, brings a sense of mutual understanding to be able to move forward and do something about it, rather than just remain static. Complaining becomes not just a purpose in itself, but 'a fun way to share your annoyance[s], laugh about them, discuss [them] and in some cases also take action'. This also extends to the audiences of the choirs.
Though complaining is often defined as 'dissatisfaction without action', it is often the starting point and has the potential to bring about change, particularly when enough people complain about the same thing. Sometimes the complaints are directed at things that cannot be changed or controlled, such as the weather, in which case the role of the complaints choir is to build a communal feeling to remind people that they are not alone in a lot of their struggles, which improves the situation.
Using the universal act of complaining as an art to bring people together means that one of the main principles of the choirs is that anyone can start one and join, whether or not they can sing. On a practical level, this means that the created songs should not be too complicated (though it is still a challenge to put together and perform a song with many people in a short space of time). The song should also be uplifting to some degree, in order to help people feel more energised and positive about their complaints.
Tellervo and Oliver see their role as 'party hosts' for the choirs. They want to make a nice invitation, make people feel welcome and like they want to be there, but create a space for the people who actually make the party and not take up too much space themselves. It is also important that people are able to connect and make friends.
Having said all this, the Kalleinens explain that when setting out the project, they tried to keep free of any straightforward goals, and rather approach it as just being active members of society. All of their projects are open invitations for anyone to take part, so if people join in, then that indicates a need and shows the concept can work. The idea is that the collaborative experience is provided.
*this complainer also produced the following quote, which I believe sums up the idea behind the project quite nicely:
'You can't complain about your bonsai tree. You can only work on it.'
