Jun 20, 2017 By Jacob Calvin Meyer 3 min read

Mt. Lebanon’s volunteer Community Relations Board is hosting an art competition for local middle and high school students to promote diversity in the community.

The winning design will be featured on T-shirts and postcards printed by Commonwealth Press and will be hung in the municipal building. The deadline for submissions is July 1, and the competition is open to students, grades six through 12, who live in Mt. Lebanon.

Bob Taylor, a Community Relations Board member, said the goal of the contest is “to foster good feelings about the diversity in the Mt. Lebanon community.”

The contest, called ”Unity in the Community,” is another response from the board, along with others in the community, to a string of incidents throughout the Mt. Lebanon School District last fall. Four swastikas were drawn into a bathroom windowsill at Jefferson Middle School, while another was sketched in mulch at Washington Elementary School.

In response, hundreds of Mt. Lebanon residents gathered for a unity rally in December.

“The rally was sort of the kickoff point, and since then we’ve had a bunch of different groups trying to keep the spirit of that rally moving forward,” Taylor said. “The art contest is just one thing we can do to sort of add to the greater whole and add to the momentum of the rally moving forward.”

Like many others, Taylor was surprised at the incidents last fall, describing them as “a wake-up call.”

“These things can happen here, and you can’t just wait for it to keep happening,” Taylor said. “We need to combat it the best ways we know how. Something small like the art contest can foster positive feelings when it comes to diversity and inclusion in the community.”

When the board was brainstorming ideas to promote diversity a few months ago, Taylor pitched the art contest idea, and the board liked the idea of focusing on teenagers.

“It’s hard to change the mind of a 40- or 50-year-old,” Susan Morgans, Community Relations Board Staff Liaison said. “It’s easier with teenagers, so that’s who we wanted to start with.”

Taylor is also familiar, he said, with the artistic abilities of students in the school district.

“I have kids in the school system here, so I know how talented some of our local artists are at the school level,” Taylor said. “I’m definitely excited to see what the kids come up with.”

Taylor said with the often-heated political climate, this contest will hopefully help shift the focus in the community.

“Politically, when you start talking about minorities or people of different races or colors, those conversations turns negative a lot these days, which is something we don’t want to see, especially in our community,” Taylor said. “So the art contest is one small way we can try to combat that and put the focus on all of the positives that people of all types bring to Mt. Lebanon.”

Entries must be sent to Morgans at smorgans@mtlebanon.org with the entrant’s name, age, grade, school, address, daytime and cell phone number. The author must sign the artwork, and the file of the scan or photograph (.jpg, .gif or a .png) must be at least 800px on the longest side with a resolution of 72dpi.