Is there something missing in Edmonton that you’d really like to see built? Now is the time to hone your idea. Soon, the Edmonton Project will be accepting more submissions.
“At the very beginning, we are just looking for a very high-level idea,” co-founder Alyson Hodson said.
“We’re not expecting people to come to the table with a budget or with feasibility or anything like that. We just kind of want to get the Cole’s Notes of what the idea is.”
READ MORE: Edmonton Project aims to unleash creativity to better the city
She stressed this is not a branding project. People interested in submitting ideas should think: is this something — an actual physical structure — that would really add to the city?
“That’s the whole spirit of the Edmonton Project; you don’t have to spend a lot of time on it.
“It might just be an idea that you’ve always had that now you have a platform where you can kind of put it forward to see if you can bring it to life.”
The Edmonton Project launched last year to help take ideas from concept to much closer to reality. The winning submission last time was a gondola over the North Saskatchewan River, now called the Prairie Sky Gondola.
READ MORE: Idea to have Edmontonians commute by gondola takes another stride as it reaches for the sky
“Your idea can be as big as you want it to be,” Hodson said.
“Prairie Sky Gondola… was probably one of the largest and most adventurous ideas that would require the most work and the most funding… But it doesn’t have to be a huge idea either.”
Edmonton Project does not fund these ideas nor does it want any taxpayer dollars to be used for them.
“We’re not asking for any funding whatsoever from any levels of government,” Hodson said.
“Depending on what the idea is, it’s then kind of up to, to some degree, the feasibility of the project to see what it’s going to take to make that happen… whether that be the actual people who generated the idea taking it to the next level, or someone else in the community taking it to the next level, or even someone who’s a foreign investor coming in potentially to do it. The sky’s the limit.”
Watch below: Commuters and tourists in Edmonton may soon have a unique and scenic way to cross the river. Fletcher Kent has more on the River Valley Gondola proposal.
Hodson said the idea doesn’t even have be selected by the judges as the “winning” submission in order to come to fruition. The Edmonton Project hopes to help generate and nurture lots of great ideas. Founders are expecting an uptick in interest over last year.
“We were really, really pleased with it. Honestly, at the end of the day, we didn’t know what to expect. We didn’t know if we’d expect one, or 100 or 300 ideas and I think it generated exactly what we wanted it to.
“We’ve got a great city with a lot of bright minds and I don’t think we have to sit around and wait for people to make ideas happen for us.
“Sometimes we wait for municipal or provincial or federal government or other people to do these things but this proved people could generate their own ideas and then take them and make them happen.”
READ MORE: Gondola over the North Saskatchewan River wins the Edmonton Project contest
More details about Edmonton Project 2.0 will be released early in the New Year but Hodson is encouraging Edmontonians to start thinking about what they might submit now.
“What’s something that they would want in the city? Something they’d… want people to come see it who are visiting from other places? You want to go see it when you’re in the city, it makes you proud.”
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