Firstly, many thanks to all of you who have joined the GeniUS! community and have engaged with us so far. Whether you have followed us on Twitter, watched with interest the ideas being submitted, or been one of the bold and brave in contributing some fantastic solutions to our challenges, we have been overwhelmed with the interest and participation over the last six weeks.

So, what next?

Over the coming days we aim to provide a full update on each challenge. This update will announce which ideas have been chosen for further development and how and why these ideas have been selected. Where work has begun to bring these ideas and solutions to life we will update you on the activities that have already taken place and how this work is progressing. And finally, we will outline the next steps within this work to ensure that the ideas and solutions chosen progress towards a date for implementation.

Look out for new discussions threads as they appear on our web platform providing these updates. These will be added by members of our Open Innovation Team who are working on each specific challenge. These threads will be constantly updated over the coming days and weeks in order to keep you bang up to date with the progress of the work.

Watch this space!

Future Challenges

This doesn’t mean the end of our work with GeniUS! We want to continue using our web platform to work alongside the wider community in solving the problems and challenges faced by the Council and City as a whole. Work is ongoing to decide which are the next challenges that we should aim to address. As we do this we are really interested in finding out which challenges the community believe we should attempting to tackle.

We will soon be inviting you to contribute your thoughts and ideas as to which challenges we should open up next on the GeniUS! platform.

Portas ‘Town Team’ Scheme

In keeping with the spirit of innovation we’re looking to tap into the creative thinking of our GeniUS! community to help come up with ideas to boost the economic growth of York City Centre. City of York Council is currently putting together a bid for funding from the Portas ‘Town Team’ Scheme. This week we’ll be opening up the platform for your creative ideas as to how we could go about boosting the City Centre’s economy.

Although these ideas will not be subject to the processes dedicated to our GeniUS! challenges and ideas, they will help our City of York team come up with ways in which this challenge can be met.