Regular visitors to this site might’ve noticed a change to our usual homepage banner in the last few days. The regular one’s been replaced by an invitation to ‘Surrender Your Say’ and experience Tourettes Syndrome for a day. That day is tomorrow!

In case you’ve been wondering what it’s all about, here’s a video that explains everything:

A few weeks ago the team working on this campaign for the Tourettes Syndrome Foundation of Canada (TSFC) approached me to ask if I’d like to help and I said ‘absolutely.’

I love the idea of giving anyone who uses Twitter the chance to experience a little of what it’s like to tic. Everyone who signs up will hand over control of their tweets, and instead of choosing what they say they’ll tweet a range of real vocal tics. I’m delighted that some of these’ll be mine.

The idea of sharing tics on Twitter isn’t new to me. I tweet a tic every day as my #dailyoutburst and even have my own Twitter bot, @TicBot, who automatically tweets tics of mine hundreds of times a day. But now, through Surrender Your Say, you too can experience what it’s like to say random things without any control.

TSFC often take a fresh approach to raising awareness. Two years ago I wrote about @Random, a documentary about Tourettes that’s different every time you watch it, just like people’s experiences of the condition.

Campaigns like this can make a big difference because the more aware people are of Tourettes the easier it is to live with it. Embracing a tic-enhanced timeline for 24 hours will show your solidarity with people for whom tics are part of life – all day, every day.

You can support this interesting and creative way of promoting discussion, challenging misconceptions and building empathy by signing up now to Surrender Your Say and test-driving Tourettes.

Please help spread the word by asking your friends, family and co-workers so surrender their say tomorrow too. Let’s make the whole world tic for a day!