We all know Madison is a fun place to live, but how fun is it, exactly? How do we amuse ourselves? Where do we amuse ourselves? And who participates in these amusements?
On March 28 and 29, we'll try to find out. And we need your help.
From 6 p.m. on the 28th to 6 p.m. on the 29th, Isthmus reporters will fan out to all corners of the city to explore "Madison at Play," or #MadPlay. We'll be at restaurants, nightclubs, sporting events, museums, theaters, golf courses, parks, libraries, hiking trails, skating rinks, stores, bowling alleys, garage sales, classes, farmers' markets, gardens, gyms, the zoo, the lakes, you name it. You'll find our stories, photos and social media updates at MadisonAtPlay.com, which we'll continually update throughout the 24-hour period. Then we'll run excerpts in the April 3 edition of Isthmus.
If the project sounds too big for one alternative newsweekly, well, it is. So we've enlisted the help of formidable UW journalism professors Sue Robinson and Lucas Graves. Their students will join Isthmus writers in the field, all the better to provide saturation coverage of the Madison area. We previously teamed up with Sue and Lucas for two other epic investigations, MeetMadison and the national-award-winning MyMadisonDay.
We'd like to enlist your help, too. Let us know how you're amusing yourself on March 28 and 29. Tweet using the hashtag #MadPlay during that 24-hour period (photos encouraged!), and we'll aggregate some of them on the live blog and in print. Use the same hashtag for Instagram, YouTube and Vine. You can also post your observations to our Facebook page at facebook.com/isthmusmadison.
We hope #MadPlay will show exactly how fun it is to live in our city. If you join us in this project, we can all have fun together.