Ten benches in the parks around the Clock Tower in Bitola are no longer just somewhere to sit. Plaques with verses by selected authors have been mounted on them, along with QR codes so anyone who sits down can find out more about the writer and their work.

The initiative, "The City Reads Poetry", ran from 25 to 27 August and was carried out by the Youth Cultural Centre in Bitola as part of the Global Learning youth leadership programme. The young volunteers cleaned, prepared and painted the benches themselves. No hired crew, no tender - volunteers with brushes.

The idea is simple, and that is exactly why it works: get poetry out of the books and put it where people actually are - in the park, on the street, in the spaces where they stop and rest. "We wanted young people to be the ones who create the change and leave something behind in their own city," the Youth Cultural Centre said.

The scale is worth noticing. This is not a million-euro project with a ribbon-cutting and a photo op. It is ten benches, a little paint, a few plaques and three days of work. But interventions like this are the ones that stay visible every day, unlike far more expensive ventures remembered only through the press release.

Bitola does not become Paris because of it. But ten benches with verses are ten more places in the city where somebody will stop for a minute and read something they never expected to read that day. For one August, that is not nothing.