The city’s creativity being tapped and mapped

The deadline for b.tween’s Mapping Creativity project passed at 12pm today and it’s been great to see just how many innovative ideas have been pitched – and nearly all in the last 48 hours!
Looking at the pages a week again was a very different story but it seems the whole of Manchester’s online community has been working away right up to the last minute to come up with what they hope to be the winning idea.
Among the 29 entries received as I post, there’s a scheme to re-claim unused buildings for artistic purposes , a way of linking live events in different countries and a scheme to help Salford communities create video blogs .
The entrants now face the public vote and will be assessed by the online community – a sort of digital Dragon’s Den.
Four will then be selected to carry our further research on their idea before pitching it at a public session at the Museum of Science and Industry in October .
Just one lucky winner will then get £25K of funding from the Manchester Beacon scheme to put their project into action.
It’s sure to be fascinating to see how this evolves so either myself or Paul will update this blog on the progress over the next few weeks.
Best of luck to all those taking part in the challenge.
(Disclosure: The Community as Curator project bid is by my husband Julian Hartley.)