A few weeks ago, we challenged the defenders of the old oil tank come up with some ideas on what could be done to make the tank an asset to the Botanical Gardens redevelopment project. Well they have come back in force and their ideas sound a lot more exciting than the current proposal of demolishing the tank to make a car park. The basic idea is to convert the oil tanks into a huge open space filled with craftsmen who create works of art that can be used to decorate public places in Cairns of for sale to the public I have just heard about the concept of the tanks artist colony and do not know the details. Currently the supporters of the tank artist colony are drafting detailed plans that provide those details and also show how the car parking issue can be solved. The outstanding thing about the new proposal is the quality of the thinking that has gone in to it and how professional the proposal is (a page from the oil tank art centre proposal pdf ~ 450K). The proposal reminds me of an award winning arts centre in the City of Whitehorse, Victoria. In this city, the community rejected the city council’s original vision for developing an arts centre. Genuine and open public consultation allowed the public to send a message to the council about what the public really wanted. Creative people working on the project found ways of using common cheap materials to create a world class arts centre that the city council now describes as an artistic and cultural hub within the City of Whitehorse. It is one of those places that makes you wonder how people can have so much imagination. Left: Original vision of the Box Hill Arts Centre, Right: What the people wanted. To ram through the destruction of the old oil tank to avoid having to evaluate this proposal for an arts centre would be a criminal act and we think or hope that Cairns City Council does not do this sort of thing. In the most recent cover story of Future of Cairns, we talked about using the open source model for creating a better community. The proposal for using the oil tank is open source design in practice. It is about everybody putting their best ideas on the table and allowing the public to select which ideas to use and finding ways to integrate those ideas. If you want to get involved, in this open source project, please send an e-mail and we will forward it to the people making tanks art centre proposal.