Test Town - aiming to reinvent the Town Centre

by Startacus Admin

Young Self Starters at the ready - TestTown is an innovation challenge for 16-25 year olds from across the UK to come up with original and innovative uses for Britain's town centres...

Town Centres and High Streets have taken a battering over the last few years. Apart from the odd leafy suburb, there aren’t too many UK high streets that haven’t felt the effects of both the ongoing recession and the changing shopping habits of the UK population, who these days seemingly prefer to shop online as opposed to walking the length of a street and back.

It’s an issue that Mary Portas, with her Portas Pilots scheme sought to address and her subsequent high street review offered up some good suggestions on how UK high streets could be revitalised. Many of our high streets have space after space of empty retail units, just wanting to be filled - and this is where the opportunity lies:

Can you come up with a Solution that will fill that space?

Whilst many competitions will ask you “what your idea will mean in terms of financial return”, this challenge first and foremost asks you to come up with an innovative, creative and inspiring idea that will potentially realign how and why our high streets are used.

Test Town is an exciting new Carnegie UK project, and ideas will be put forward to a panel of ‘experts’ who will shortlist applicants to go forward to the final round of the competition. Whilst there is the chance to win £10k for your idea, Test Town are keen to point out that the reward that you gain, is secondary to the reward you may find in creating an innovative and creative town centre space and physicalizing it as well!

The only shame is that this isn’t a competition open to anyone with an innovative idea since one of the main criteria is the requirement that applicants must be aged 16-25 to apply.

The competition launches on the 28th February and you can register your interest now by going to the main Test Town website. Specific shortlisting details are still a tad sketchy, although entries are expected to be shortlisted during April with the actual Test Town competition running at the end of June.

If you like this - you might also want to check out Digital High Street. 

Good luck self starters! 

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Published on: 14th February 2013