A Swindon bookstore has helped to brighten up an otherwise rainy and grey week with a colorful and joy-filled viral social media video

The independently run Bert's Books in Old Town was transformed into a scene straight out of a musical film, with the online advert showing a full-on dance number taking place inside. 

The video was created by students of the John Wilkes Academy as part of their degree course and showed them performing the upbeat musical theatre Jazz dance routine to music from the hit film La La Land while wearing bright coloured suits. 

The video has gone viral amongst the Swindon community on Twitter, gaining 512 shares and 1,216 likes, and creating 130,000 impressions at the time of writing. 

But how did this little piece of magic come about? Alex Call, aka 'Bert' himself, spills the beans.

"The dancers are regular customers of ours and they wanted to make the video as part of their course, so I naturally said 'you can come and do whatever you like'," he said.

Swindon Advertiser: Wilkes Academy students performing in an advert for Bert's Books in SwindonWilkes Academy students performing in an advert for Bert's Books in Swindon (Image: Bert's Books)

"I didn't know anything about what they were going to do, but I saw the colourful suits and immediately thought it was going to go well, and when I was finished I couldn’t have thought of anything better."

The five performers were Matthew Roberts, Callum Quinnen, Ewan Revill, Cole Dilley and Piers Illand who are studying for a Musical Theatre degree at the Swindon-based performing arts academy.

They were tasked with creating a fake company and chose social media marketing, with Bert's Books being the perfect company to make their video for.

"It's a really vibrant shop, family-friendly, and has a really good aesthetic," Piers said. "It's LGBTQ+ friendly as well, so we all really wanted to promote his sense of community and friendliness.

"La La Land was our inspiration for it, we just wanted everything to be as fun and vibrant and as colourful as possible, which was why we had the different coloured suits. But just being in the shop it came easily."

Piers continued: "We did it as just part of our course but since it came out we've had other businesses approach us so now we're thinking that it could be something that has longevity - using our experience with dance and musical theatre as our USP to create promotional videos for small businesses, that’s what we feel sets us apart."