Birmingham Bed Swap?
Written by Nicky Getgood on Monday, May 11th, 2009 ( 3 responses )
Tags: annablackaby, birminghampost, creativerepublic, fazeleystudios, helgahenry, iantaylor, jonbounds, karenstrunks, lylebignon, marketingbirmingham, Marverine Cole, mis-guidetoanywhere, skynews, thsh, twitter
On 21st April I went to Creative Republic’s Media Skills Masterclass at Fazeley Studios. Birmingham creatives were given tips in getting publicity for their work by guest speakers Ian Taylor (Marketing Birmingham), Anna Blackaby (Creative industries editor, Birmingham Post), Marverine Cole (Sky News) and Jon Bounds, who gave a lovely speech about how we should listen and converse with the people we want to notice us.
We were then set the task of drafting a press release about something we’d like a bit of buzz about. Here’s my effort, inspired by the book A Mis-Guide to Anywhere. Big up to the lovely Karen Strunks for her great help and choice words.
Birmingham Bed Swap
Wake up in someone else’s bed.
Birmingham and Black Country bloggers, twitterers, photographers and writers will swap homes for one night only, and talk about their change of scene and routine.
Nicky Getgood, author of the Digbeth is Good blog [that's me!], will be encouraging people from the West Midlands to take a mini-holiday by swapping homes with like-minded locals. Participants will be invited to blog, tweet and record online how they settle into their new homes.
A list of odd jobs such as nipping to the shops for a pint of milk, borrowing a cup of sugar from a neighbour and walking the dog/feeding the cat will force people to explore and interact with their new surroundings and should make for some interesting observations.
Recording these experiences online will hopefully create an archive of a fresh pair of eyes on West Midlands areas.
And that’s as far as I got. THSH PR Manager Lyle Bignon has since very kindly offered to help create some publicity around this so I guess I need to know before I accept – are people up for this? Would you like to spend the night in an unfamiliar part of town and let someone else sleep in your bed, walk your dog and harass your neighbours for demerara? Let me know!
Creative Republic Chair Helga Henry ended the evening by telling us we’re exciting, courageous, inspiring, funny and clever. And we should shout about this more loudly. All brilliantly rousing stuff.
Comments:
on May 11th, 2009
Interesting idea… I have a wife, a 9 year old son, two cats and serval goldfish.
Which do I bring with me, and which can I leave behind to be looked after by my visitors?
on May 11th, 2009
I like this as a way of encouraging new writing about local areas – something there isn’t enough of on city blogs. The number 11 bus ‘psychogeography’ report was a useful intervention although it was a tad condescending about Bournville (although if you spent longer here you’d probably write even worse stuff).
However, will this fall down on the geography of where the twitter community live? I’m not saying everyone on twitter is in south brum but we’re probably going to learn a lot about the city if we swap Moseley with Falcon Lodge rather than Kings Heath with Bournville.
on May 13th, 2009
No way dude. I admire your ability to come up with something amazing in one of those seminar things but I haven’t hoovered since last summer.
What is your opinion?