Ten ideas, 100 days, $1,000
We asked: are you making Tampa Bay a better place to live? And you answered! We received over 80 proposals for our 10/100/1000 project that ranged from organic farms for children to flash cafes on the waterfront to increasing pedestrian safety in downtown. The projects were a perfect example of innovation, creativity and love for our region. We would like to thank everyone who submitted a project!
The winner, Reuben Pressman’s “Swings Tampa Bay” project plans to bring the community together by installing swings in public places. Swings is reminiscent of those public art projects in which artist-painted fiberglass animals (cows, pelicans, geckos) suddenly appear throughout city downtowns, with the crucial difference that the swings are interactive.
Pressman, 22, a senior at USF St. Pete majoring in entrepreneurship (with a triple minor in economics, international business and leadership), had already seen what the swings could do. His roommate had installed one on campus as part of a class project, and Pressman suggested they hang a few in public parks “to bring people who didn’t know each other together.” The materials for each swing — a two-by-four painted bright red and a length of rope — cost under $10 at Home Depot, and using his roommate’s newfound expertise in swing knots they hung one from a banyan tree in Straub Park around Christmastime of last year.
Within minutes, he says, “we watched people run up to it and use it.” The city took it down soon thereafter; another one in Lassing Park in Southeast St. Pete stayed up a week. But the potential was there: the swings did indeed bring random people together with nothing more in common than the fact that they “all know what a swing is and know how to use it.”
Pressman was sold on the idea. “I just saw the spark in people’s faces.”
And because the 10/100/1000 competition, in his view, was about “bringing the community together,” he thought the Swings project would be a perfect fit.
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