Paint What Matters - Scientific Significance

Title:     Paint What Matters – A Blowers Street Flashbulb moment.

Abstract:
The excitement caused by the Paint What Matters win for Halifax has led to some interesting research into the thought process and outcome of voting for local voters.

It is often considered a flashbulb moment of society when a single event causes the mutual coming together of a large network of thought processes, emotions and lives around a single occurrence.  With the support for Paint What Matters generated by the videos by Mayor Mike Savage, which attained a viral status on YouTube and social media, and the subsequent win for Halifax for a streetscape makeover the potential for such a flashbulb moment was upon us.

The further decision by Halifax Regional Municipality to further the contest fever by adding in a new vote to decide which street would benefit from the makeover then our flashbulb moment was truly created.  It was at this point that our researchers choose a random location within the HRM to ask a random group of people to undertake both a short survey and also to ask them some further open ended questions.  The results quite clearly show that the consensus over a single winning street has been achieved and that those who share the consensus gain within their lives.

Method:

A random location was chosen (for this experiment we chose Ocean Optometry’s office on Blowers Street, Halifax).

A random group of people were subject to investigation, n=4.

Results:

Section 1 – Survey results

The results of the survey questions are shown as below:

1 – Question: Have you voted daily in the HRM “Paint What Matters survey”?
      Results:        Yes    100%        No    0%

2 – Question: Did you vote for Blowers Street?
      Results:        Yes    100%        No    0%

3 – Question: Do you feel that your vote for Blowers Street has made you a better person within yourself?
      Results:        Yes    100%        No    0%

4 – Question: Do you feel that your vote for Blowers Street has made you a more admirable person to people you meet?
      Results:        Yes    100%        No    0%

5 – Question: Would you recommend everyone else to also vote for Blowers Street?
      Results:        Yes    100%        No    0%

Section 2 – open question responses, a selection of responses are quoted

1 – Question: Has anything positive happened in your life since you started to vote for Blowers Street?
     

      Responses:

• • “Since voting for Blowers Street, I really feel like my life has turned around and I have the ability to win friends and influence people”
  • “I have noted that since voting for Blowers Street my hair has been glossier and easier to manage”
  • “Nothing really, however, I do know that my friend who didn’t vote has just been deserted by their dog.  It was almost as though the animal knew and was embarrassed; I’m not taking that risk!”
  • “I can’t really say that it is necessarily connected, but the  Ferrari parked outside wasn’t there before I started voting for Blowers Street, just saying”

2 – Question: Would you recommend for other people to also vote for Blowers Street?
   

      Responses:

• • “With this kind of positive energy, people would have to be mad to not vote for Blowers Street!”
  • “If they want to look beautiful and attractive, then YES!”
  • “I don’t think that we could categorically say that not voting for Blowers Street would necessarily mean that something bad would happen to them, however, I would caution them that if they did not choose to vote for Blowers Street they may want to make sure that their affairs were in order.”
  • “Feeling the love, voting for Blowers, it’s where it’s at”

Conclusion:

It is quite obvious to perceive the positive outcomes from voting for Blowers Street in HRM Paint What Matters street selection.  While individual benefits from voting may vary compared to the results seen in this research, the only conclusion that we can draw is that to vote for any other location would appear to be quite perilous.

While trying to understand the decision making process better, we asked a forensic artist to interpret the vision of our subjects while on the HRM’s Paint What Matter’s website, here are the images:

Image 1	Image 2
Image 3	Image 4

So, in conclusion, vote daily and vote for Blowers Street! http://www.halifax.ca/surveys/paintwhatmatters.html


We would also like to apologise to anyone who has been upset by the forensic artist’s images!
We would also like to reassure people that this scientific article has no bearing on real science at all!

Main Street Matters

It is great news that Halifax is one of the twenty winners in North America to get a three block makeover thanks to Benjamin Moore.  The campaign to help win in this competition was no doubt helped by Mayor Mike Savage starring in some YouTube videos which gained the cult status of "going viral" and spreading the word about the competition and Halifax's desire to win.  You can see one of the videos here:


Well done!

Winning the competition gets us past the first hurdle, but now the streets to benefit from the makeover have to be decided and we are really excited to see our very own Blowers Street listed as one of the possibilities.  So it is time to vote again and, here at Ocean, we'd be really grateful if you would vote for Blowers Street.
The Halifax website for voting is here: http://www.halifax.ca/surveys/paintwhatmatters.html and you can vote once a day until the 19th of July.

So, come on, let's make this happen for Blowers Street!!