You now have a chance to combine your love of skiing, art and Banff National Park for a chance to win your very own custom designed skis.
Both talented and aspiring artists are invited to enter the SnowDays Ski Design Challenge to celebrate Banff National Park and help showcase the UNESCO world heritage site internationally.
“The whole idea behind this is to really blend skiing and art inspired by Banff National Park. So what we’re doing is asking all kinds of artists to submit their customized ski designs inspired by Banff National Park,” said Banff Heritage program director John Bowden. “We’re really trying to draw on that heritage of Banff National Park and the Rockies being a source of cultural inspiration for hundreds of years and trying to connect that with our ski heritage.
“Once we get all those submissions, we’ll pick a winner and have a team of judges go over everything and we’ll judge them on both the quality of design and the connection with Banff National Parks and what that inspiration looks like. Each submission will require a brief explanation of what inspired their designs and we’ll judge on that – and also to a certain degree with public voting as well.”
“The contest will run until the end of SnowDays, Feb. 9, and all the information is at SkiandSnowboardCanada.com. People can download templates there and upload the pages as well after they’ve had some time to think about what they want to do and design their skis and we’ll post those entries online,” Bowden said.
“We really encourage the public to check them out and vote on them to participate. We’re really looking forward to getting a lot of different submissions from around the world that will hopefully showcase how different people really perceive Banff National Park.”
An added bonus to the contest is the partnership between SnowDays and local manufacturer Snoday Skis in Cochrane, who will make the winning design.
“What’s really unique is they can customize these designs,” Bowden said. “So what you get is high quality skis, lots of different templates and be awarded the winning design.
“The site is really accessible and that’s where you can download the file and play with the template, but you have to keep the SnowDays logo and wordmark in the actual design. You have absolute free reign to put whatever you want in there, and we really encourage people to think creatively about what inspires them from a winter’s snow and ski angle.”
Snoday Skis will also feature the winning design so the public can purchase their own set of the winning design over the next year. “Then it will be decommissioned for another design when the contest will start all over again,” said Bowden “Hopefully, with enough support, it will be become an annual contest.”
Submissions will be evaluated by a judging panel based on quality of design, connection to Banff National Park and popular appeal. Visit www.skiandsnowboardcanada.com. for full details of the SnowDays Ski Design Challenge. The contest runs until Feb. 9, with the winner being selected on Feb. 18.
