A Little Bit of History
#riotcleanup is not an organisation but an idea. During the August 2011 UK riots @sophontrack created the hashtag #riotcleanup in a tweet suggesting the public respond positively to the chaos. At the same time @artistsmakers was mobilising people to do exactly that. The hashtag was passed to him. @phoeberoberts compiled a list of planned riotcleanup events and notified police. @artistsmakers stayed up that night with a broken laptop and a whiteboard writing down the affected areas in London and planning clean ups in those places. Then the @Riotcleanup account was set up by a young musician, Sam. Within minutes of this, riotcleanup.co.uk was set up to collate times and locations for the clean-up operation. The site went live at 5:30am. Thousands of people (including some celebrities with rather large followings) tweeted about cleaning up and used the hashtag. A combination of these elements culminated in several hundred people turning up in various locations the next morning, brooms in hand. Cities outside London took the idea up and @Riotcleanupmanc, @Riotcleanupwolv, @Riotcleanupnott and @Riotcleanupbrum were set up. 1,000 people turned up to clean up in Manchester. The response was a fantastic example of a trans-idealogical consensus.
Post clean up, a team including sixteen year-old web developers @carboia and @PatrickSocha as well as @Tonsko and @bl0ke improved the website, with @sophontrack writing bits here and there. Sam, tweeting under the name @Riotcleanup has been a constant support, having done a lot of groundwork connecting people in various affected communities.
We'd like the website to serve as a portal for the continued positivity of the affected communities.
