This winter is going to be better than the last one. And it’s not because we are necessarily going to have warmer weather, less snow and cleaner streets. It’s going to be better because of METROPOLIS:
Edmonton International Winter Festival and the folks at Events Edmonton.
The people who bring you Taste of Edmonton are going to help make this year’s winter cosier, warmer and more interesting. This year, we’re going to embrace the fact that we are a winter city instead of trying to run away from it.
Heated pavilions will be situated in Winston Churchill Square, and I am sure fun will be had by all.
During the Grey Cup last year, the centre of downtown was filled with people and the city just seemed to be more alive and vibrant. I am hoping METROPOLIS will do the same this year, but for a much longer time. The festival starts on New Year’s Eve and runs until Feb. 20.
METROPOLIS will involve heated structures made from scaffolding covered with shrink-wrap. There will be a children’s pavilion, a community centre, a taste of winter pavilion and, wonder of wonders, a place to have a beer. Architects from Canada and the United States have been invited to design these structures, so they are likely to be nothing if not interesting.
The intent is to turn the pavilion design into a yearly international design competition. Since there are lots of winter cities in the world, I suspect a design competition is likely to get us noticed. It also means that the festival will not look the same two years in a row.
One can only hope that the public embraces this festival and that it grows year over year. That would enable the organizers to run the interactive program spaces every day rather than just Fridays and weekends.
It would certainly be nice to be able to invite someone here in the winter with the promise of some unique made-in-Edmonton fun. On most winter nights, our downtown looks like a scene from Life After People.
As all of us know, January through February is probably the time when most of us begin to wonder what we did to have been condemned to have to endure such long winters.
A brightly lit Winston Churchill Square filled with people cannot help but make the winter seem warmer and shorter. Kudos to Events Edmonton.
