LoveMK Day
A day to spread the love throughout the city
T irteen years ago, Carys Underwood, Social Media Manager at Destination Milton Keynes (DMK), the offi cial tourism organisa- tion for the city, woke up in the middle of the night with a germ of an idea. What if it were possible to create a day on social media to help people across the city and beyond share their love for Milton Keynes? And with that idea #LoveMK Day was born. Over the next decade it has become the biggest one-day social
media celebration of all things MK, starting small, with support from the public, stakeholders, businesses and DMK members, it has gone on to be a key milestone each year for harnessing the pride that many have in the place they call home. #LoveMK Day helps to promote Milton Keynes as a leisure and
business destination but it’s much more than that. Carys explained: “Over the years Milton Keynes has been much
maligned by the press and mainly by people who have never been here, and who just don’t get it. My wacky idea was a way of letting everyone who values the things that make MK special - like the green spaces, roundabouts and grid roads - shout about them and be rightly proud of them.”
Across the years so many people have been involved, from
mayors and celebrities, schools and businesses, sports teams and community groups, as well as loads of ordinary people just wanting to help share the love. T e main hook has been the use of the hashtag. When it started,
the aim was to get #LoveMK trending on Twitter (now X), but the creative juices started fl owing and using the hashtag became a challenge for people. T ere have been pizzas with the hashtag on, cakes, fl owerbeds, pies, Lego, and it even made it into a Minecraft world. T e more creative you could be the better – back in 2013 it was even cut into a lawn. One of the more spectacular creations was a giant MK made out
of deckchairs within Queen’s Court at centre:mk. It looked amazing in the spring sunshine and was used on Anglia TV. T ere have also been some incredible stories to come out of the day. Back in 2015, DMK wanted to see how far around the world the #LoveMK Day phenomenon could go and, as a result, received photos from as far away as Perth in Western Australia and Route 66 in California. In 2016, the #LoveMK Day community came together to help reunite Emilia and Simon with their lost wedding ring, and in 2021 the landscaping team at MyMiltonKeynes supported the day by planting a very special fl owerbed which grew to create the hashtag.
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