Join Retweet For Towns Day – 8 March 2012

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.

Soon we will see an increase of the mobilisation of Town Teams thanks to the enthusiasm of the UK government 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.

To complement the work of politicians, local authorities, town centre partnerships etc Retweet For Towns Day on March 8 will be 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 will tweet and retweet about what is important to them about their town.

Retweet For Towns Day will see the UK come together for a day of collaboration to openly discuss what was once and still can be the heart of our communities.

Social media already contains much discussion around all aspects of our town centres. Retweet For Towns Day will be an outlet for that passion and allow a balanced discussion in an online forum. Twitter is at the same time the portal for disheartened residents to complain that their town does not meet their needs any more while proactive town centre managers, town councils  and tourism boards are telling a story about the how fantastic their town is. Retweet For Towns Day will bring all parties together to allow a free and honest debate around people’s local areas while enabling the sharing of great ideas and initiatives that can make town centres better places.

The economy, town centres and the high street are so high on the agenda that everyone has a view, and most views are valid. 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.

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.

During the day we will be monitoring the debate and collecting responses which we will then bring together in a single document that all will be published online and will be freely available to all.

• For more information on Retweet for Towns Day call Mark on 07590 005692 or email mabarnes@btinternet.com to register an interest