Festival Saturday (and the rest of the weekend too)
Summer officially arrives in Edmonton next week, which probably explains why this weekend is so jammed with festivals.
Friday and Saturday there’s the Utopia Music Festival, which kicks off summer in Hawrelak Park.
On Saturday we’ve got Bikeology (in Beaver Hills House Park), and the whole month of June is actually Bike Month, Park(ed) is back on the streets, taking up parking spaces (on 102 Avenue), Rock The Square (at Churchill Square), Africa Connect (at the Edmonton Expo Centre), and the Hope Street Festival (105 Avenue and 100 Street). 107 Avenue also has Safe Streets and a Night Market on Saturday (afternoon and evening).
Improvaganza 2011 is just getting warmed up (and will even have social media improv on Monday). Opera Nuova’s Vocal Arts Festival and the Edmonton Pride Festival are both continuing too.
For you, young and engaged folks, tonight is Pecha Kucha 10: Designing Downtown (which you can watch through the Edmonton Journal’s livestream), and Next Gen’s back at it on Sunday with the DIYalogue. We’re happy to be one of the groups chatting about cultural start-ups and entrepreneurship.
On a more serious note, there’s a picnic in Giovanni Caboto Park to remember murder victim Nina Courtepatte, and others lost to violence.
Watch It!’s got a BOOMBUS on Whyte Avenue today (4-8pm) and it’ll be downtown, on Jasper Avenue, Saturday morning. Keep your eyes open for this rolling watch and street party.
Over at La Cite Francophone you can catch a production of Little Shop of Horrors.
In music…Radio for Help plays the Pawn Shop tonight…Joe Nolan has a CD release at the Haven Social Club…Sidney York plays Brixx Saturday night, with Kaley Bird…The Collective West and Jeff Morris are at The ARTery…Wunderbar’s got a Weird Canada and Scion show…And Zero Cool’s at DV8 with Down the Hatch…
You can always catch a movie, which is likely to be a summer blockbuster right now.
Farmer’s markets abound on the weekend, downtown, in Old Strathcona, St. Albert, and in Callingwood.
The Edmonton Capitals are hosting the Chico Outlaws down at Telus Field.
Explore Edmonton
Today’s event selection is not really one you could accomplish (in its entirety) in one evening, or even one full day.
You may remember me talking about the Edmonton Community Challenge (put on by the Next Gen committee and Edmonton Federation of Community Leagues) back in June.
Our scrappy little team from Strathcona Centre placed a respectable fifth, notable due to our handful of active members. While we were darn proud to have collected the most food for the Edmonton Food Bank in the sculpture challenge (King Edward School gets a lot of the credit) I think it’s safe to say the core of our team had the most fun in the city-wide photo scavenger hunt.
By checking Flickr, I would say the other top teams also had a blast with this.
We had to run all over Edmonton, taking photos of ourselves in front of historically significant buildings, on bridges, shopping in all of the Business Revitalization Zones (BRZ), spending time in our favourite parks and local haunts, high-fiving councillors, and hitting up each branch of the Edmonton Public Library.
I learned that Edmonton has WAY more bridges than one could get to in a day, or even a week. Especially if you start counting footbridges. The libraries are spread out, and it took many hours to get to all of them (the EPL Go at the University of Alberta is also the cutest little library).
Somehow we completed every task on the photo scavenger hunt, even getting to the whale at West Edmonton Mall before it was removed for the opening of Victoria’s Secret. (There may be an item or two you can’t do right now.)
Living in one of the city’s oldest, most vibrant, neighbourhoods sure helped too. Strathcona has plenty of historically recognized buildings, it’s a BRZ right now, has any type of business needed for the photo challenge, a library branch, giant trees, and plenty of people to start a parade.
Prior to this challenge, I had never been to a bottle depot. I feel more like an Edmontonian now.
So today I offer you a chance to explore Edmonton like you probably haven’t before. Take a scan through the scavenger hunt from the Edmonton Community Challenge and choose a few items to track down, or try, before the summer is out.
I bet, just like I discovered how historically significant my work neighbourhood is, you find out a few things about Edmonton you didn’t know.
(It’s a lot of fun to see how many U of A bunnies you can get into one picture. Those suckers are fast.)
Let me know if you do any of these, or have photos of them already. You can always toss them into our Flickr pool too.
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Keep in mind you should play safe and not break any laws. Also “team” is you.
Here’s what you could do: (more…)
Edmonton’s July 26 Headlines
Zoom zoom.
Welcome back to the land of the working.
I trust you had a heck of a weekend, Edmonton. There was plenty to choose from.
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We interrupt this selection of Edmonton news for a rant of sorts.
Stepping in for Graham Hicks at the Edmonton Sun, Marty Forbes asks:
Forbes doesn’t know who the city’s next leaders are. Really? I know he’s just trying to solicit engagement from the newspaper’s audience, but the way this is framed makes it seem like he actually doesn’t know any of the city’s young, or up-and-coming, politicians, fundraisers, connectors, and business leaders.
How about Councillor Don Iveson? I suspect a few younger folks might land in City Hall or on the Edmonton Public School Board, watch those races. Mack Male was the face of a City Centre Airport pro-closure movement, galvanized by Internet communication. Cary Williams and many of the Next Gen committee-ers brought us Pecha Kucha and try to connect with, and retain, people under 40.
Forbes mentions Graham Hicks and Gord Whitehead, so how about Chris Scheetz at CISN, or media couple Ryan Jespersen and Kari Skelton? MLA Rachel Notley. Biz guy Chris LaBossiere. Those behind TedxEdmonton, Empire Avenue, and Seek Your Own Proof.
Geez, Edmonton Sun, you sound like you haven’t heard of any of these people or people behind these groups.
Update: Mack quickly fired off a list of 75 (75!) of Edmonton’s future leaders. He, rightly, points out that a lot of them just might not be found hanging around the old boys clubs.
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And now back to our regularly scheduled programming…
from the Edmonton Journal:
Sale of crack pipes on Alberta Avenue definitely legal. Too bad! (The efforts to turn around 118 Avenue continue. Then I’m reminded a convenience store by my house sells axes too…)
Discover the other side of the tracks (That’s my side of Whyte!)
Premier issues red-ink warning for Alberta next year
Release Alberta child welfare report: critics
Art keeps prisoners on a healing path
Thousands greet giant Jade Buddha
From the Calgary Herald: Alberta eHealth tab will top $1.4B
from the Edmonton Sun:
Ex-NHL owner disputes arena economics (Come on, Sun, it’s Monday. Can’t you let Daryl Katz start the week on a good note, run this story Tuesday?)
Tax watchdog sounds off on rink (And from the Journal, Katz taking cues from old Pocklington script.)
Councillors eye arena loose ends (We probably won’t have any firm details from city administration until fall, probably after the election.)
Chief begins winning over critics
Another health PR blitz, any minute now
Toddler survives three storey fall (This is one everyone’s got.)
from CBC Edmonton:
Hold power plant to its emissions vow: groups (After getting approval with one set of environmental plans, the plant’s looking to save money.)
Free life-jacket use offered at 2 Alberta parks
Canada’s Findlay wins London triathlon (That’s Edmonton’s Findlay.)
from CTV Edmonton:
Dixon wins Edmonton Indy after Castroneves was penalized (Is it weird to anyone else that you can’t pass an opponent in a race? It’s a race.)
Octane Racing confident it will steer Indy into the green (Well, they’ve got some of your municipal tax money to help with that.)
from Global Edmonton:
‘Vigil of hope’ for St. Albert couple missing for three weeks
Sounds like a challenge
We found a perfectly good hacky sack while out cleaning. I'm not good at hacky sacking.
I’ve been mentioning something called the Edmonton Community Challenge, so I figure I should explain that in a little more detail.
How about right now, does that work for you? Good.
The Edmonton Community Challenge is a collaboration of the Edmonton Federation of Community Leagues (EFCL) and the city’s Next Gen Committee. The EFCL is the group that looks over all of the city’s 150 community leagues, leading them, guiding them, helping them out. Next Gen is a committee made up of 18-40-year olds, with the aim of attracting and retaining young, creative people in Edmonton.
They’ve teamed up, and secured $15,000 from Boardwalk Rental Communities and Telus, to get the city’s community leagues competing. Also part of the team are The Works Art and Design Festival, Capital City Cleanup, Bikeology Festival, Edmonton Bicycle Commuters, and Youth Emergency Shelter Society
The $15,000 prize, to be awarded July 1, will be for a capital project. Looking at some of the bio information from the leagues you can see where that would go. Some are talking parks, others playgrounds, and some (like my own team from Strathcona Centre) would use the money at their community hall.
There were also prizes handed out at the kick-off breakfast, and somebody is going to win an iPad, also July 1. AN iPAD!
It’s a great idea from the NextGen/EFCL braintrust. They had another good idea last year, teaming up to connect younger people (18-40) with their community league. It was a great mixer and probably helped people even realize we had community leagues. If you don’t know which league is yours, check here.
A morning event is only as good as its pancakes.
The challenge is the best part though. There are plenty of ways to get community leagues to compete for money. You could have them submit applications, write pitches, etc… but this is all about community spirit.
The events include the pancake breakfast (Points just for eating pancakes!), a neighbourhood cleanup, collecting food for the Edmonton Food Bank, collecting recyclable bottles and cans to be turned into cash for the Youth Emergency Shelter Society, tuning up and donating bikes, attending the Bikeology Festival, building a canned good sculpture, and, the best of all, a photo scavenger hunt.
Our teammate, Gord, is high-fiving Councillor Don Iveson because high-fiving every councillor is part of the scavenger hunt.
More than 400 people, from 21 neighbourhoods, will be competing in some or all of those events. We’ll be the ones snapping photos of ourselves outside of libraries and pleading with you to let us take your bike in for a tune-up.
If you want to see what people cleaned up, or what kinds of scavenger hunt items we’re seeking, you can search “yegchallenge” on Flickr.
Already, I’ve been having a great time. I’ve met neighbours, and community-minded people, and I’m experiencing aspects of Edmonton I may not have. I mentioned that I kicked around the Norwood and Sprucewood neighbourhoods, during Heart of the City on the weekend, and it was because of this contest.
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I went back in time to clean up Whyte Avenue. Actually, that's just Eric, our team's leading cleaner.
I also got up early Saturday, which doesn’t always happen. And I helped clean up a couple blocks of Whyte Avenue. I like things tidy but I’m not normally the guy out cleaning up, not even during Capital City Clean Up events.
So I think it means the plan is working.
Also, I’ll take your canned goods, old bikes, and bottles and cans.
Armature
An example of the proposed look of the area, from the City of Edmonton.
By @tricotmiss
I attended a very interesting meeting last night. Edmonton NextGen invited people to a public consultation meeting about the proposed “Armature” development in the Quarters. There is a long-term plan to revitalize the Quarters and the Armature project is central to that plan. But rather than focus on the development of buildings the Armature is the development of the greenspace that will make those future residential developments a community – and a showcase community for the city of Edmonton.
This post is just my impressions from the meeting, I’ll have more detailed information next week.
Basically, the plan is for a pedestrian parkway running from 103 Avenue, south to Jasper Avenue and the top of Louise McKinney Park along 96 Street. There were a number of things that excited me about this project: (more…)
