Tweet-Who? Changing Voices in a Digital Age

I’m hoping that come 7th August, the hashtag #SilverTakeover will gain at least a little bit of currency in our small corner of the world wide web. On that day, Heritage & Culture Warwickshire is giving its social media accounts over to some of our volunteers. These are volunteers who haven’t really ‘done’ social media before, so it will be interesting to see how it goes!

A young person’s tool?

Often, social media is seen as a young person’s tool (and channels such as facebook are already passé for a certain generation!) so we’re giving it a go to see how an older generation gets along with it. It has many benefits – the ability to communicate easily across space being one, along with an immediacy and an ability to chat, and it can offer connections and link-ups with people and organisations of a similar bent. If the ability to visit other people and / or organisations is out, then social media offers the opportunity for people to, well… talk, if in a different medium. Of course, that ties in nicely to one of the reasons for the existence of this website, so it’s no coincidence we’re heading down this path! Shared experience, shared interest, shared… community are all valuable, and ensuring people with these interests don’t feel isolated is key.

So, on the 7th August, we’ll see how this experiment works out. We’ll get the volunteers to introduce themselves, have a chat with one another via the various social media platforms and, hopefully, have a chat with those of you who have access to twitter and / or facebook too!

What’s in a hashtag?

So, remember the hashtag #SilverTakeover and use it if you’d like to ask them a question, or just say hello! The accounts that will be taken over are:

@OurWarwickshire

@OisinTheDeer

@RuairiTheFawn

@Chambearlin

On facebook, check out the museum facebook page, along with the one for the County Record Office.

We’re also on Instagram, too!

Encouragement welcome!

Beyond that, they’ll be reporting on various things that are happening during the day around our sites at Market Hall and the County Record Office. They will of course need bedding in, so do please be gentle with them but also, do please encourage them!

For what’s a community, online or offline, without people?