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2o13.o3.25 ~ edmonton on the make

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words, pics – fish

013 2o13.o3.25 ~ edmonton on the make

If you haven’t seen it yet, here’s the Make Something Edmonton video, written and crisply narrated by the brilliant Todd Babiak.

The key moment of this handshake is Mayor Stephen Mandel offering help – in my mind, it’s the symbolic core of the rebranding/not-branding initiative: multi-level interaction and collaboration.

By providing some funding and a forum to showcase our makings here, the city transcends the soft point Edmonton is a place where humans build things (unlike New York or Dawson City?) and encourages us to pull up our socks – and broadcast our intentions – through this easy-to-use form.

Read this as free publicity beyond your normal Facebook and Twitter octopus tangos. It’s an online dating service, but for your ideas and those who might assist.

003 2o13.o3.25 ~ edmonton on the make

It’s easy (and sometimes therapeutic) to bitch about what’s wrong with Edmonton, and even people who try. One of the clever things about Make Something Edmonton is that while it contains boosterism – “We can do it!” – it responds to undeniable questions: “Why do we need to do it? What needs fixing? What are we missing around here?”

That honesty is refreshing. It reminds me, scaled up, of Sheri Barclay’s Make It Not Suck initiative from a few years back, which covered white construction barricades on Jasper Avenue with street art.

Thanks to a growing herd of volunteers attached to #makeityeg, any decent idea has an even better chance of stampeding if you’ve got the steel.

008 2o13.o3.25 ~ edmonton on the make

Here’s Ryan Jackson’s video of the event. Maybe chasing a beer keg down a hill or lighting up the High Level Bridge in sports team colours isn’t how you’d personally ameliorate the capital (these were two balls pitched at the Avenue the other day) – but if you think you can do better, door’s wide open.

We’ll see how this plays out, but I’m all over the on-the-ground, people-power potential here.

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