Submissions are open for an annual city-sponsored video contest to honor the legacy and influence of Martin Luther King Jr. as part of the annual Bloomington Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday Celebration. The winning video will be shown at the celebration in January at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater.
The contest was created to give students a chance to participate in the celebration, Celebration Commission Deputy Chairman David Hummons said. Before the video project was developed, students worked together to create websites about King’s legacy.
“This year we’re trying to get more students involved in doing something representative,” Hummons said.
The commission picks a theme every year to help students focus their projects. Past themes have included “The Power of One,” in which students explored how one person can make a ?difference.
Students can work in groups, and Hummons said teachers will sometimes work with students on a video as part of a class project.
“We try to get people of various age categories and genres involved in the whole Martin Luther King celebration,” he said.
Past projects include a video from a sixth-grade University Elementary School class in which students held up pieces of paper naming milestones in the civil rights movement. Their video includes messages like “One person can spread acceptance” and “One person can spread ideas” and ends with the students holding up paper with quotes from King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
The 2015 theme has not yet been announced on the city website.
Elementary, middle and high school students in the Bloomington area can submit video projects on the city’s website until 5 p.m. ?Dec. 12. Videos should be 45 seconds to 3 minutes long and uploaded to YouTube.
“We have various inequities because of race and gender and sexual orientation,” Hummons said. “We’re trying to portray the best of King, the King movement, in terms of the values they propagated.”
King’s influence and the influence of the civil rights movement is important for students to consider because the inequities King fought still exist, Hummons said.
“We feel that as we go along, some of that fight still continues,” he said. “We really want to educate people about the movement, the social progressive movement, and they need to recognize that this quest is not over.”
