Ideas Challenge winning ideas announced!

This year saw us run the Edinburgh Festivals Ideas Challenge, a big experiment over the summer and autumn inviting the public to suggest their ideas of how to make the festivals even more amazing.

We received the best part of 300 ideas and also importantly had hundreds of comments as part of the discussion around them which was especially satisfying since allowed us to open our ongoing conversation about festival innovation to a much wider audience.

The full press release is here but here are the highlights.

Our seven esteemed  judges had a really tough job choosing their top 5 for the main prizes and they scored ideas according to quality, impact and feasibility of the ideas and the ones that came out on top were:

• What if listings in the programme had a symbol to show that they were not in an accessible venue?
• What if “Festival Flasks” were available, with refill discounts for users festival-wide therefore saving cups, allowing cheaper drinks and providing marketing opportunities?
• What if there was a mobile app where audiences could leave through a ‘knowledge tag’ outside the show’s venue with a review and suggestions for similar shows?
• What if the Meadows was a camp-site with toilet/cooking facilities, security and low pitch cost for those performers/visitors on low budget?
• What if a content aggregator combined all listings for children’s shows and then made them searchable by age range?

Edinburgh Festivals Ideas Challenge now closed!

The start of November saw the close of the Edinburgh Festivals Ideas Challenge.  Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who took part and shared their 300 ideas and so many votes and interesting comments and discussion.  It was exciting to have such a public conversation about festival innovation and it felt an honour to be part of this community.

We’ve now got a busy job sorting out all the entries and then doing the judging etc so watch this space for news of not only winners but what happens next for the project overall.

Thank you.

Only 3 days left to take part in the Ideas Challenge

http://ideas.edinburghfestivals.co.uk/

The Edinburgh Festivals Ideas Challenge closes on Monday October 31st and so you only have a few days left to submit your idea (or ideas) of how to make the festivals even more amazing and stand a chance to win one of the many rather fine prizes, which are based on either the ideas with the most public votes and those chosen by our esteemed panel of judges.

We’ve already have 275 great ideas and we’d *love* to take it to 300 before the end of the competition so to take part, share your ideas, vote and comment on the ones you like the most and have the chance to win some amazing prizes which include festival tickets, books and  and for the judge-chosen prizes an iPad 2.  #ooh

Full details at http://ideas.edinburghfestivals.co.uk/ and remember, do tell everyone you know that might be interested in it.

What’s your idea?

Announcing the Ideas Challenge

ideas.edinburghfestivals.co.uk

For the first time ever, the Edinburgh Festivals will be inviting the public to share ideas on how to make the festivals an even more amazing experience for everyone involved, by asking performers, audiences and organisers to take part in the Ideas Challenge, particularly to raise ideas for how to make the festivals greener, innovative ways to make more out of queues & crowds and new helpful apps and websites.

While we’ve created ways for technologists and universities and the festivals themselves to get involved in this innovation programme, we have always wanted to involved everyone else who makes the festival city as magical as it is.

So whether you’re an audience member, a performer, a producer, press/media, a business owner or an organiser please do log onto the site and submit your ideas.

Oh and there are prizes – 25 £100 prize packs for the most popular ideas as voted by the public and then another 5 prizes of either an iPad or a £500 festival package for the top 5 ideas as chosen by a special panel of judges which include BillWill Gompertz (BBC Arts Editor) Lyn Gardner (Theatre Critic, The Guardian), Richard Wiseman, (Psychologist and best-selling author), Faith Liddell (Director, Festivals Edinburgh), Andrew Coulton, (Administrative Director, Edinburgh International Book Festival).

The Challenge runs from now until October 31, 2011 with prize-winners announced in November.

So there is plenty of time to browse, submit, discuss, rate and get involved!