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Date: 2/23/2021
SOUTHWICK – The Southwick Rotary Club and Southwick Cultural Council are teaming up for their first-ever Artistic Expression Contest at the Southwick Regional School, giving students an opportunity to show how the COVID-19 pandemic affected their high school experience through art or literature.
Mike Parent, the Rotary Club’s president, said the contest was originally going to just be a writing contest for juniors and seniors before brainstorming with the Cultural Council.
“They added that it would not be just a writing contest, but they wanted it to be an artistic expression contest, where you could do writing, art, or pictures. They also wanted to do it nine through 12, so we meshed it all together,” he said.
Parent added that the contest was an idea that came about because the club’s other events were restricted as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“This is an outgrowth of COVID, usually Rotary is active running different events which serve as fundraisers for us. This year we are very restrictive in terms of what events we want to hold because of COVID. We always want to do something for the community, and this is a vehicle for us to do that,” he said.
Along with the contest, Parent said the Cultural Council wanted to use the submissions as a time capsule to see how students felt during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Their idea was this would not just be a writing contest, but it would serve as a chronicle of what was going on with kids at this time. They would like to put it in the library at some point when kids want to go back and see what kids were going through during this pandemic maybe 10 years from now,” he said.
When judging the submissions, Parent said the judges from the Cultural Council and the Rotary Club will not have the names for the students until their votes are cast.
“In order to avoid conflict, we’re having the kids turn them into the office without their name on it. The office will number them and keep track of the student’s name, but the Cultural Council and the Rotary will judge these, and we will not know the names of the people turning them in. We’ll pick a contest winner and find out who it is,” he said.
Across each grade level, the top two students in each category will receive a prize.
“The two top prizes at each grade level are $100, one for writing and one for artwork. And then there will be two second prize winners that will be awarded $50 at each grade level. More likely than not, that will be a check,” he said.
While this is the first writing contest the Rotary Club has sponsored in the schools, Parent said the club has sponsored other events in the schools.
“We have an organization at the high school called Interact, which is the high school version of Rotary. We have done a lot with them and oftentimes they come and support some of our events. We also give all of the third graders in the school system a dictionary each year,” he said.
Parent added he thought it was an appropriate time to run a contest in the schools after seeing stories about what students are doing during the pandemic after they announced the contest.
“It’s very appropriate the last two days there have been all kinds of programs on national news about kids during this pandemic and what’s happening with them. Of course, we launched this, and we hadn’t seen anything on television before, so it’s very appropriate at this point,” he said.
Students have until March 5 to bring their submissions to the office at SRS and the winners will be announced on March 26.