A BRIDPORT man who has dreamed up a £500 million ‘Garden of Ideas’ project he says is a ‘cross between The South Bank and Glastonbury on steroids’ wants support to get the scheme off the ground.

Simon Elliott says he wants to re-imagine an historical pleasure garden for the 21st century and will be working with the Eden Project to do it.

Mr Elliott said the idea was unveiled at Shanghai Great Festival of Creativity and promoted there by Prince William.

He said: “Prince William brought a lot of gravitas to it and we were subsequently summoned to No to talk about it and are now being promoted as one of 20 major projects which are a substantial platform for British creativity.

“We are working with BSharp in Lyme Regis all sorts of very small groups who usually don’t get their voice heard at a time when the budget for arts are being cut massively.

“It’s a re-imaging of the historical pleasure gardens where kings as well as people from the streets would walk the same paths – where Mozart first every performed, where Handel’s firework music was written for.”

He plans on getting British and Hollywood filmmakers to get involved with film installations.

He added: “It will be the opposite of a Disney theme park, which is cartoon and cliché, this is more about thinking how we are treating the planet and how humans are to each other live events and special festivals. Sort of a cross between the South Bank and Glastonbury on steroids.”

The public need to vote their favourite project on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday next week on virginmediabusiness.co.uk/pitch-to-rich/news/.