Call For Proposals: 24th International Garden Festival

Posting Date: October 27, 2022
Deadline: November 29, 2022

The International Garden Festival is launching a call for proposals to select designers to create the new temporary gardens for the Festival’s 24th edition.

Racines / Roots is the theme to which designers are invited to respond with their proposals to imagine a present and a future that is ecologically, economically and culturally responsible by drawing on the teachings of past generations.

“With the advent of the digital age, globalization and the rapid speed of technological advancement that are changing our relationship with time, the physical world and each other, Racines / Roots rejects the unrooted vision implanted by the industrial revolution to embrace an approach that seeks to be nourished from a common heritage.”

The theme counters the forces of homogenization that is part of globalization, incorporating the notion of globality coined by the Martinique poet and philosopher Édouard Glissant (1928-2011).

The jury for the 2023 Festival will choose five projects from this call for proposals. Designers are invited to design a garden that can take place in one or other of the axes of the Festival. The artistic and technical committee of the Festival will identify, in collaboration with the designers, the site that will best showcase their project.

Designers will be asked to imagine their garden for exhibition for at least two summers and to propose strategies for the repurposing or recycling of the garden or its materials after the end of its exhibition.

This call for proposals is open to all landscape architects, architects, visual artists and multidisciplinary teams from Canada and abroad. The Festival encourages participants to form multidisciplinary teams. Applicants are limited to one proposal, either as individuals or as a team. Participants can be from a single city or country or cross international boundaries.

Designers whose work has been exhibited in one of the last three editions (2020, 2021 or 2022) of the Festival are not eligible for this call for proposals. The festival will open on June 23, 2023, on the site of Les Jardins de Métis / Reford Gardens.

The deadline to submit proposals electronically is TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2022 at 17:00 EST. Applications submitted after the deadline will not be accepted. All the details are available here: www.projects.internationalgardenfestival.ca