HOUR DAY: How #walsalltownstories will try to tell a tale

I love Twitter. I really do. But sometimes you need more than 140 characters to try and tell a story.

That’s why with the Walsall Town Stories event we will try and use it to give an idea of the people who work in the town centre.

Twenty people whose jobs are often celebrated will be featured as part of the initiative on Friday October 25.

Starting at 6am, for an hour each they will be shadowed and their story relayed via @walsallcouncil before they pass on to someone else.

There will be a range of people from Walsall Council staff who do an uncelebrated job like the street cleaner and the trading standards officer to the market trader and the curry house worker.

Two things have helped shape it. The @sweden account which is passed to a new Swede every week and also the wonderful Kabul: A City At Work series which uses film and a blog post to ask who the people are who do day-to-day jobs.

Why those two? Because they allow a human face to develop.

When we did #Walsall24 a few years back we wanted to develop the idea to see where it would take us. It’s a simple model that can work in all sorts of organisations and the LGA have done some great things with it in pushing it out as a national initiative called #ourday. But it will be interesting to see how an hour of time can tell a human story.

You can follow the event by following @walsallcouncil.

I’ll whack up a storify after the event here too.