Cardboard Fort Night is what it sounds like! People come and make cardboard forts while drinking beer. We provide huge swaths of brand-new cardboard - the kind you could only dream about as a kid (like when someone in your building bought a new refrigerator). We also provide duct tape, magic markers and scissors. A DJ plays wonderfully inspiring fort-building music! When people arrive, they are invited to start a new fort or to join a fort currently being built! This is a great opportunity for people to mix and mingle. After a couple hours of intensive fort-building, we will have a celebrity judge walk around! I am not sure who it'll be just yet (as I know no one) but I am certain if I put the call out we can find someone! Anyway, the celebrity judge will award 1st, 2nd and 3rd place prizes to the best forts of the night! Almost like at a science fair. (Criteria and prizes to be decided.) Then, after the awards and the applause and the photo-taking comes the Great Smashening of the Forts! Yes, at the end of the night everyone smashes all the forts into dust and helps clean up. (We will have to pick a venue with a dumpster.) And then we all go home, having made new forts, but more importantly, new friends.

I am someone who like to organize weird events. At various times I have organized a Slowdance Night (where we play slow songs all night long, where we provide Designated Dancers for the shy, and where you get a Dancecard-booklet with the playlist so you can "book" certain songs with certain people), a Strip Spelling Bee (which is like Strip Poker, but it's a spelling bee, and it's played in front of an audience of hooters and hollerers. Essentially there are 3 rounds, and if you get your word wrong, you have to take off a third of your clothing); and a Crowd Karaoke Singalong Event (where everyone comes, picks a song to add to the songlist, and all sing, like a choir, together to the lyrics).

You can find more details about those events at www.slowdancenight.blogspot.com, www.stripspellingbee.blogspot.com, and www.crowdkaraoke.blogspot.com.

Cardboard Fort Night! has been kicking around in my head for a long time, but I could never find a way to make it financially feasible. I never wanted to charge an extortionary materials fee. Your grant would allow me to enact this awesome event. I can promise that it will happen in Toronto, sometime in 2011. Likely at the Dovercourt House. Thank you for your time & consideration & for creating this grant.