A Musselburgh woman has used her creative talents to protest against the controversial Musselburgh Flood Protection Scheme.

Sheena McDonald crocheted green hearts and sent them to all 22 East Lothian councillors with a handwritten note in support of a local campaign for the plan to be “paused and reviewed”.

Sheena said: “Craftivism is a gentle form of activism involving making or creating as a way to raise awareness or to persuade those in power.

“It’s a growing movement in the UK, an alternative to the often combative nature of protest.”

She added: “I have been concerned for a while about the plans for the Musselburgh flood defence.

“The plans seem to include a lot of wall building and little in the way of nature-based solutions.”

She continued: “I discovered the Musselburgh Flood Protection Action Group on Facebook and felt that I should add my voice to the growing concerns in Musselburgh about the proposed plans.”

The flood protection plan, costing £43.5 million – 20 per cent from East Lothian Council and 80 per cent from the Scottish Government Flood Programme – aims to introduce defences against a one-in-200-year risk of flooding in the town.

The scheme aims to provide formal flood protection to about 3,000 properties in the town at risk from a major flood event.

Four replacement bridges – Goosegreen, Shorthope, Electric and Ivanhoe – and various types of flood defences are among measures planned to protect Musselburgh from flooding.

New physical defences along the River Esk corridor and coastal foreshore are also planned.

Another two separate projects have been brought together with the flood protection plan – future-proofing the ash lagoons sea wall at a cost of £52.4 million, with talks ongoing between the council and ScottishPower; and parts of the Musselburgh Active Toun project to provide enhanced footpaths, pathways and cycleways with £122,000 from Sustrans. This takes the total investment to £96 million.

The first design – shown to the public during the exhibition in June – presented a mix of different solutions.

The presented approach along the seawall was to use rock armour. Along the rest of the length there were 15 other different styles of physical defences proposed, including concrete walls, masonry-dressed walls, earthen embankments, enhancement of dune systems, repair of existing boundary walls, repair of the existing Fisherrow Harbour walls, and hybrid combinations of some of these techniques.

The new physical defences would also include flood gates and glass panels.

East Lothian Council has said that the outline design presented to the community in June was the first vision and would evolve.

The feedback received has been considered and the final outline design will be presented to the council in January.

Sheena has previously used craftivism to highlight her views on climate change.

She explained: “In 2022, I was unable to go to Glasgow for COP26 to join the march through the city and decided to contact the legislators directly.

“I crocheted 129 green hearts and delivered them, along with a handwritten note, to every MSP, asking them to keep the environment central to every decision they made.

“In September 2021, as part of a UK-wide campaign, I knitted a yellow canary and sent it to Kenny MacAskill MP to help highlight growing concerns about climate change.

“Yellow canaries need clean air to fly high and far, and their usefulness to miners to warn of foul air is well known.”