Earlier this week I was fortunate enough to one of the 2400 members of the public to be selected to spend 59 minutes 46 seconds on top of the 4th plinth as part of Anthony Gormley’s One and Other project .
For those of you that aren’t aware Gormley aims to create an astonishing living monument. The plan is that the people of the UK occupy the empty Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square in London, a space normally reserved for statues of Kings and Generals. “They will become an image of themselves, and a representation of the whole of humanity. Every hour, 24 hours a day, for 100 days without a break, a different person will make the Plinth their own”.
So far people have run dance classes, made paper airplanes, stood naked and let off balloons all under the gaze of hundreds of passing tourists, business folk and family as well as hundreds of people watching one of the 4 live webcams.
So what did I do? I read “Skin”, a fantastically macabre story by the genius Roald Dahl. It was an amazing experience and something I feel extremely privileged to be part of. Not only will be I archived in the National Portrait Gallery for all eternity but I’ve managed to raise some money for my favourite charity.
How does this relate to social media you ask? Well, whilst I was up there I had around 20 @replies and my followers increased by 15 people and most importantly to me I reached 50% of my charity target by the end of the day – what does this say about social media? Well, it goes to show that if you have content that is genuinely interesting to a consumer whether they are viewing it for humour, intrigue or for more noble reasons then it will spread with a little help, but that content needs to be good in the first place.
