In 1825, an 'Experiment' was launched which was to catapult a North-East town onto the global stage. David Roberts learns about a new project which aims to, once again, focus the eyes of the world on Darlington.

AS Locomotion No 1 trundled along the Stockton to Darlington Railway, it pulled behind something resembling a shed on wheels.

It was in fact the first passenger carriage – called the The Experiment.

Yesterday, the new Darlington Experiment 2.0 was officially launched.

The people behind the scheme say the experiment, or Dx2, aims to use the power of the internet to harness the same sort of creativity which led to the founding of the railways.

John Orchard, the managing director of Darlingtonbased business Marchday plc, believes the scheme can help to promote Darlington.

Dx2 is a website which encourages people to upload videos, photographs and messages about life in Darlington and various events going on in the town.

It channels all videos posted on the internet about the town from other sites such as Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.

Mr Orchard said: “If you know anything about Darlington, people know it’s the first railway town.

“This is another social project like the railway.

“I don’t know if this will be quite as important as the railway, but it’s about creating a groundswell of support towards Darlington.

“This is about people of Darlington promoting Darlington and not an advertising company.

“Who could be better ambassadors for Darlington than the people of Darlington?”

The organisers have coined a new term for taking part in the experiment – Dxting.

The project is being funded by Darlington Partnership, a group of individuals, organisations and businesses in the town.

The funding has initially been set aside for three months.

A group of schoolchildren in Darlington, known as Lab Rats, has also been set up to use video cameras and encourage people to get Dxting.

Twelve-year-olds Ella Grogan and Antonia Kelly, from Hummersknott School, already have plans to interview youngsters at Abbey Primary School and also elderly people in local nursing homes for the website.

Ella said: “I’m really looking forward to it. Darlington’s a great place and I’m looking forward to speaking to local people, it should be really good fun.

“Darlington’s a really good tourist destination and we want to encourage people to come here.”

Alison Ferst, the web content manager at Teesside University, believes making use of social networking sites is a good idea to help promote a product, or in this case, a town.

She said: “In this day and age the use of things like Twitter and Facebook and video content to get a message across and get the message noticed is absolutely huge. We use it at the university.

“If you post something on a site where you have followers or friends it will be posted straight to the people you want to reach.

“It’s a new and very direct and informal way of getting your message across.”

The Darlington Experiment can be accessed at darlingtonexperiment.org.uk

Here's how to get DXting

■ To upload information to Dx2, users must be a member of one of three international social networking sites – Flickr, YouTube or Twitter.

■ Users should then sign into the appropriate site and upload their video to YouTube, photos to Flickr or tweets to Twitter.

■ To allow Dx2 to put videos, pictures, or Tweets on the tube train, they must be tagged in order for the website to find them.

■ Twitter users should prefix tweets with the hash tag ‘#dx2’, while any of the following tags can be used with YouTube or Flickr: ‘darlington experiment’, ‘darloexp’, ‘darlingtonexperiment’ or ‘dx2’. Tags should be used without the speech marks.

■ More detailed information about uploading to Dx2, YouTube, Flickr and Twitter can be found by logging on to darlingtonexperiment.org.uk/howto.php