Share an Idea wins international award

The Christchurch City Council has been recognised internationally for its Share an Idea community public engagement campaign.

Share an Idea, which involved the community sharing its ideas for the redevelopment of the Central City following the earthquakes, was the “unanimous overall winner” of this year’s Co-creation Award. The awards recognise and celebrate the most original and successful co-creation initiatives.

2011 is the first time the Netherlands-based Co-Creation Association has given the award to an initiative outside Europe. Share an Idea was nominated by Capgemini Consulting after the company read about the initiative on a Dutch news website.

Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker said the award was great recognition of the work by Council and its staff as it worked to recover from the series of devastating earthquakes during the past year.

“Share an Idea was designed not only to collect and process the best ideas from our people, it was also designed to replace our sense of powerlessness in the face of the earthquakes that shattered our city.

“Our community's vision provided all of us with a vision that gave us a reason to have hope; hope for ourselves and our descendants that we would again have a city that would sustain us and our descendants in a way that the city we had just lost had done.”

The judges said the Share an Idea initiative “stood out from the others”. It was one of 49 projects nominated for this year’s awards.

Chairman of the jury Jaco van Zijll Langhout said: “Share an Idea is an inspiring example of co-creation, which established co-creation with their community in several ways and at several moments in time: an online platform to post ideas, a Community Exp, workshops and roadshows, to develop the city centre together.

“The response on this initiative was overwhelming: more than 106,000 ideas have been shared and more than 10,000 people visited the Expo. Next to developing the new city centre, the result of this co-creation is also a stronger community.”

The award will be presented to Mayor Bob Parker mid next month when Jaco van Zijll Langhout visits New Zealand.

For more information on the Co-Creation Association and the awards, check out:

http://www.co-creationassociation.org/