MANSFIELD – Students in Richland County have the opportunity to showcase their scary storytelling skills through a new contest from Richland Academy of the Arts.
The school is introducing a new Halloween Story Contest for the county’s third, sixth and eighth graders that is designed to give students the opportunity to express their creative side. The contest runs from now until Oct. 3.
The idea came from the Academy’s new arts community liaison Bryan Gladden, whose new duties include expanding relationships between the community and the educational systems in Richland County.
“We already have music and dance, which in my mind is already pieces of storytelling, so to expand that and use storytelling as an overall umbrella, we could add things like plays, creative writing, films or podcasting to an already existing arts organization,” Gladden said.
“By creating this contest, we hope to build a new interest in storytelling, creative writing, self-expressionism and exploration.”
The contest is open to all third, sixth and eighth grade students that attend school in Richland County, including public, private, charter and/or home-based schools. Stories may be scary, humorous, or anything in-between.
Each grade has its own writing prompt and requirements. Third graders are encouraged to write a short, 300-word Halloween story, perhaps telling of a monster under the bed or their experience trick-or-treating.
Sixth graders are asked to write a 400-word short story that includes a Richland County local landmark or legend. Examples include Hidden Hollow, the Block House, Malabar Farm, Gatton Rocks, a UFO sighting, or perhaps a sighting of the Loch Ness monster at Charles Mill Lake.
Eighth graders are asked to create their own legend or myth regarding a location, person or animal (real or imagined) in Richland County.
Stories must be handwritten or typed using Times New Roman font in 12 point. They must include a cover page with the story title, the student’s name and parent or guardian’s name, and a personal identification number that is comprised of the student’s initials and date of birth – for example, BG08141999. The cover page must also include the school district and grade of the student.
On the short story itself, the story should be submitted on a separate page (or pages) and in the right hand corner, students must include only their personal identification number and grade. This ensures that judging is blind.
Stories should be mailed to Richland Academy of the Arts Halloween Story Contest, 75 N. Main Street in Mansfield, Ohio, 44902.
Judging will be based on creativity, originality, spelling and ability to follow directions. Judges for the contest include reporters from Richland Source and other members of the community. The winning stories per grade will be published in Richland Source and the Courier Tribune.
Gladden’s hope with the story contest is to foster even more creative writing among students in Richland County.
“The best outcome is to have all the school systems in Richland County get involved, and from there to hear the voices of the children and what their creative outlets are,” Gladden said. “I would love to establish and in-house play-writing group for students to write their own productions. Using this as a model, I could also do different contests and even for different grades.
“In my mind, writing in general and storytelling in particular has been around forever,” he continued. “We all have this desire to find those common threads that storytelling seems to find and we hold dear to. You might not be able to dance or paint, but everyone can tell a story.”
Entries to the Halloween Story Contest should be mailed to:
Richland Academy of the Arts
Halloween Story Contest
75 N. Main Street
Mansfield, Ohio 44902
