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Retweet for Towns
ITV weather presenter and champion of Retweet For Towns Day , Sian Lloyd
We can all play a part in shaping the future of town centres and high streets. All across the UK, resident led activity along with business collaboration is working to ensure that towns stay vibrant and will remain part of our communities long into the future. Recently we have seen an the mobilisation of Town Teams thanks to the enthusiasm of our communities to highlight the plight of our towns. However, this positivity only exists to address the fact that the majority of town centres are suffering a decline that started long before our current economic woes.
Supported by Association of Town Centre Management for a second year and joined by Reward Your World and Revive & Thrive, Retweet For Towns Day 2013 on March 21 was a co-ordinated campaign of mass tweeting about town centres. Over a 24 hour period and across the country people of all ages and from all walks of life tweeted and retweeted about what is important to them about their Town. Retweet For Towns Day sees the UK come together for a day of collaboration to openly discuss what was once and still can be the heart of our communities.
The results
- 4596 tweets containing #rt4towns (there will be tweets from people who didn’t use the hashtag)
- 1,916,970 reach (number of accounts that received #rt4towns tweets)
- 5,865,552 exposure (number of times tweets about #rt4towns was delivered to Twitter streams)
- 900 approximate contributors
- 157 Town/cities/villages/Counties mentioned/took part (that I counted so there will have been
We looked for:
- Discussion and debate around issues and solutions
- A display of pride from many who are emotionally attached to their town
- Strong views about where town centres are failing
- Demonstrations from towns about how projects are working in their centres
- Sharing of ideas about what is next for town centres
- Feedback from businesses on the high street
- Views on how businesses and landlords can help in the high street
- Ideas on how to make the town centre an enjoyable experience
- Promotion of resident led activity
- Sharing of best practice
- Networking between professionals and residents who have a passion for where they work and live
- A day of activity that displays that whatever role people have in their community, millions of us, all across the country care deeply about our town centres
Social media already contains much discussion around all aspects of our town centres. Retweet For Towns Day is an outlet for that passion but will focuses on the positives and celebrate the distinctiveness and diversity of our communities.
The economy, Town Centres and the High Street are so high on the agenda that everyone has a view. Retweet For Towns Day enables the ‘silent majority’ who vote with their feet when shopping, socialising and relaxing to have their say. This is an opportunity for those who would not normally embrace community activity and who do not believe that they can influence change to speak out loudly from their armchairs.
We encourage Town Councils, Partnerships, Town Centre Managers, Local Authorities and everyone else involved in working to make town centres a better place to join in on the day and highlight the good work that they are doing locally to preserve and develop their town centres. We want to see the projects that are being delivered successfully on a local level being promoted on the day so that other areas can learn from them to improve their own locality.
Moving forward, we will be prompting responses by asking questions like: are town centres viable? What will they look like in the future? Do people care if their traditional centres do not survive? This will be a day of activity, discussion, debate consultation and sharing unlike any other. We believe that Twitter is so easy to access that we will create a real energy for the topic and will be able to collect many people’s views over a 24 hour period.
Why have a Retweet for Towns Day?
Town centres, high streets, independent businesses and shop local campaigns are so emotive at the moment that we want to harness this, learn and share best practise in a way that is straightforward and cost free. Quite simply, we want Aberdeen to learn from Aberystwyth, and Dartford to share with Darlington while people in Chester and Chelmsford tell us what their town centre means to them.
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