Watch above: Summer has arrived, and with that in Edmonton comes 17 hours of daylight. Online Producer Caley Ramsay has more on the way Edmontonians are documenting the day on social media.
EDMONTON – Summer has officially arrived and many Edmontonians are celebrating the so-called ‘longest day of the year’ in a unique way.
The city will see just over 17 hours of daylight Saturday, and a local project is hoping to document the different ways Edmontonians are spending their day.
“It’s a collaborative story telling opportunity and we really want Edmontontonians, all kinds of Edmontonians, to be part of that story,” said Heather Zwicker, project leader of #YEGlongday.
A Make Something Edmonton project, #YEGlongday is a one-day crowd-sourcing experiment that asks people to tweet pictures, videos and personal stories on what it means to spend the longest day in one of the most northern cities in the world.
“What we’re looking for is just an image of Edmonton on a given day. It’s a little bit like a snapshot of your family, not your formal holiday shot, but that snapshot at the lake that just becomes so precious when you look back on it two years later, because you remember what you look like and what you were doing and what that day felt like,” said Zwicker.
Zwicker, who is an English professor at the University of Alberta, says the movement is also part of a digital storytelling research project.
“One of the things that’s interesting about this project is that people are always afraid that social media takes us away from our everyday lives,” she said. “But what we’re demonstrating, what we’re learning from this project is that actually social media is part of people’s everyday life, that experiences are even more special for the fun, easy way that you can share them with your fellow citizens.”
Using the hashtag #YEGlongday, organizers are asking people to tweet their pictures, videos and stories until midnight Saturday.
Zwicker is also part of the #YEGlongnight project, which celebrates the unique ways Edmontonians celebrate nearly 17 hours of darkness on December 21.
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