“I’ve got lots of ideas and it’s finally my time that somebody listened.”
The Edmonton Project is an initiative Slavo Cech couldn’t help but participate in, and his idea to project photos submitted by the public on a downtown highrise, is on the shortlist.
“It’s basically postcards to Edmontonians from Edmontonians,” Cech said. “It’s community sources; it’s a community put together photo album celebrating life in Edmonton, everyday Edmonton.”
Cech was thinking big for his proposal, with a location right in the heart of the city in mind.
“Projecting them on a grand scale, this is a ten story building, Chancery Hall, and I think just the natural gathering space of Churchill Square,” Cech said.
“This was, in my view, a little bit of a neglected building, and at least in my view this could breathe some beauty into it.”
Cech’s #OneEdmonton proposal was one of more than 300 ideas submitted to The Edmonton Project – now, the hundreds of submissions have been narrowed down to ten.
“I think it was just a brilliant idea to form this Edmonton Project and to put the call out there to anyone and everyone who has crazy ideas and there were no parameters,” Cech said. “’Just pitch your crazy ideas and we will listen’, and they did.”
As for Cech’s idea, he would work with local company Production World, and use laser technology for the projections.
“Recently, there has been major developments in laser projectors so they don’t actually have a bulb in them, so, a bit like an LED lightbulb, they’ll last for 20 to 30,000 hours,” Gary Dewhurst with Production World said.
Cech, and the teams behind the nine other proposals, will pitch their ideas in March. The winning idea will come to life in the city, permanently.
“I think it’s almost the ultimate community building exercise, where it’s totally inclusive and I think that’s what Edmonton is,” Cech said.
With files from Dez Melenka
