Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary and Regina are the latest Canadian cities to have their digital billboards turned into public art through the “Dear City” campaign. The project uses the outdoor ad medium to display tweets from the public through a twitter account – @DearCityCanada – which are then collected and curated as love letters to the participating cities.
Typical tweets include “Dear Vancouver you are like the hot expensive girlfriend that everyone wants but can’t afford,” and from Edmonton, “A prairie city is the only place that feels like home – big skies, big dreams, deep roots.”
“Dear City” – a partnership between Pattison Onestop and Toronto-based Spacing magazine – ran on mall screens across the country for two weeks in June before moving outside to digital boards in July, gradually expanding to 37 digital boards in 17 Canadian cities including Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Hamilton and Kingston.
“We’ve always been really interested in billboards and video billboards from the perspective that we’d like to see less of them,” said Matthew Blackett, publisher and founder of Spacing. “Instead of advertisers having a one-way conversation with the public, the public has a conversation with themselves and it’s interactive.”
Sharon Switzer, arts programmer and curator for Pattison Onestop and the creator of the campaign, said the project is Pattison’s way of supporting and giving back to the communities it serves.
Switzer said that at least one board in every participating city has a guaranteed spot for the not-for-profit campaign, many of which are in high-traffic locations such as main city arteries, shopping districts and near airports. The six second spots appear at least once per minute during the day.
“People already know how to speak eloquently and succinctly through Twitter,” said Switzer. “Because in a digital billboard you don’t have a lot of room, people drive by fairly quickly and 140 characters works very well. I’m quite invested in this idea of space and public billboards being part of the community and giving a voice to the community, and I’m lucky enough to do these projects that change that space for a short period of time.”
The campaign ran in 33 English language malls in June, reaching five million people each week.
“Dear City” runs until the end of August.
