Record players are a part of music that continues to shine through a variety of ways and our students are helping them do so again this year. The Crosley Record Company has found a new way for record players to come into the spotlight. They have made a contest where you can paint onto a record player that then gets submitted for judging. GRC students won last year and are trying again this year.
The contest has grown since last year, moving from just regional to Kentucky to a much wider range; from only twenty-five schools last year to two hundred and fifty this year.
“It’s a wider range of regions,” art teacher Ms. Fuller said. “So the stakes are a little bit higher…we are going to work really hard to try to get past the first round of voting.”
With so many schools participating this year, the amount of students participating in the competition varies. Our own has a group of eighteen students working on the record player as we have a specific program within the school for the different arts.
“We have our cohort program so I like to do it with visual art cohort,” said Ms. Fuller, “[I] have everyone in the class work on it in some way, shape or form.”
With such a big group of people working on the project, seniors took a leadership role to get everything done well and on time. The students split into different groups to get everything painted and the seniors were put into the leadership roles but still enjoyed the experience.
“It was kind of difficult because I was putting together the interior part,” said senior Zed White. “I organized everything that our group had put together.”
This year’s topic for design was much broader than last year’s design. “Band Together” being the theme makes everyone think about music and how people are connected. There are many different theories on how people are connected which contributed to some of the design choices for the record player. Music itself also comes together and brings people together with it.
“We were more focusing on how different genres of music seem to come together along with different cultures,” senior Liam McPherson said. “And people with different backgrounds come together and form a bond over the music that they like. We were playing on the fact that music has such a big impact on people.”
Winning first overall would provide $2,500, while placing in the top five would provide $500 for our cohort program to be able to use. Our students are hoping to win first place but even getting top five would be amazing for them and the program.
“I feel like winning would bring more attention to the fact that we can make professional art together,” McPherson said. “Winning just the $500 would just go back to us to make more art and have more materials.”
The whole group that is participating in making their record player this year is wanting everyone to be aware of what they have done so they have more votes to possibly move on past the first round of voting. Likes on social media count towards extra votes of the design our students have worked so hard to put together.
“It’s like our last push to do something and be like I won that,” McPherson said. “It’s always hard to win something if you aren’t really out there…doing it as a collaboration which is a really cool experience and it’s a nice way to get our names out there.”
