Students in search of Unsung Heroes
February 15 is an important deadline for creative students in grades 4 through 12 who believe in the power of each person to make a profound and positive difference in the course of history. Applications for the Lowell Milliken Center for Unsung Heroes’ Discovery Award must be submitted online by Feb. 15. Application, along with proposed topic and project medium are due Feb. 15 for the Unsung Heroes Art Competition. Both applications and contest guidelines are on the Center’s Website: https://lowellmilkencenter.org/.
The Discovery Award contest is open to U.S. and international student groups or individual students in grades 4 through 12. The art competition is open to U.S. and international student groups or individuals in grades 6 through 12.
This is an opportunity for young scholars to win unrestricted cash prizes and share with the world their unique interpretations calling attention to the legacies of little-known heroes. Prizes worth thousands of dollars will be given away. The grand prizes for the Discovery Award and the art competition are each $7,500. There are additional prizes of $1,000 and $2,000.
The Lowell Milliken Center for Unsung Heroes Website will feature Discovery Award-winning projects. Winning art may be chosen for display in the Center’s Hall of Unsung Heroes.
Both competitions encourage students to exercise their creativity, research primary sources and create a project on the life of an “unsung hero,” an extraordinary individual who changed history but remains largely unrecognized. The projects are meant to honor the legacy of the unsung hero and change the world for the better “by inspiring positive social action.”
Discovery Award submissions must be projects developed during the 2017-2018 school year.
Submissions may take the form of a documentary, multimedia, performance or a Website. Fort Scott High School student Zoe Self was the recipient of the 2017 Discovery Award for her performance as Lilla Day Monroe, the Kansas suffragette who championed women’s rights.
Submissions for the art competition must be entirely student-produced. Students may create a sculpture, drawing, photograph, painting, digital/mixed media, narrative film, original theater production, or a children’s book, young adult novel or short story. The 2017 Unsung Heroes Art Competition grand prize winner was Molly Cahill from Tennessee.
Her award-winning project was a portrait of Mitsuye Endo in graphite and charcoal. Endo successfully sued the U.S. government in 1944 over the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Cahill’s work was selected by representatives from three art museums from among 430 international submissions.
Billionaire philanthropist Lowell Milken founded the eponymous Center for Unsung Heroes in 2007 in Fort Scott, Kan., “a crossroads in the heartland of America,” 88 miles south of Kansas City.
The 6,000-square-foot museum dedicated to celebrating people who have “made a profound and positive difference in the course of history” houses exhibits, conference room, theater and student art projects, which have reached over 9,000 schools and 1.2 million students worldwide, according to the Website.
“Education has the power to instill in people the impulse to take initiative for the good of others,” Milken says. “Today, perhaps more than ever, youth need positive role models, and it is the lessons of history that blaze our path to a more secure future.”
