Blackstone LaunchPad at UM

On October 7th, we hosted our first annual Blackstone LaunchPad Passions Challenge, an opportunity for UM artists and creatives to showcase their work and win prize money. With this challenge, we overall wanted to create a space for students to get involved with BLP and celebrate their many talents.   

To participate, students had to enter their 3-5 best pieces of work into one of six categories: Physical Art, Digital Art, Photo/Video, Writing and Poetry, Crafts and Design, and Indigenous Arts. Once they submitted their work, they were then challenged to present it in 1.5 minutes on the day of the competition.   

The challenge kicked off with opening remarks by BLP Program Assistant, Jake Treece, and a chance for artists to mix and mingle before the presentations kicked off. Presentations happened on a rolling basis, with time given for each category and each contestant giving their pitch in succession.   

The physical art category was presented first, starting with a local body artist from Missoula, Penny Cooper. According to Penny, she participated in the Passions Challenge because she was proud of her artwork and believed it was an important and joyful contribution to the world.  Judges awarded first place in this category to Shiena Medrano, for her paintings expressing her voice through art, and second place to Hannah Geiger, whose skill across multiple mediums impressed the judges.   

Our digital art category also included a variety of mediums, styles, and reasons for the creation of the art. First-place winner Solomon Albertson-Gore creates digital art for his game design projects while second-place Logan Fisher uses his art for designs for t-shirts for his company.   

Photo/Video included competitors from programs across campus. From Physics to pharmacy and of course the UM film school. The first-place winner in this category was Juhi Singh and second place was awarded to Clint Connors.   

Writing and Poetry was the most popular category, with ten competitors. Students shared pieces on wanting to be a jellyfish, dealing with loss, rekindling friendships, and bringing light to their native heritage. Stephen Clement took first place with his songwriting expertise and we had a tie between Brady Drummond and Ava Cline for our second-place prize.  

 The Crafts and Design competitors were next to wow the judges with their clothing and crafts. Each artist had a unique perspective on their designs, with first-place winner Emily Weishaar combining second-hand materials to create first-rate fashion and second-place winner Ruby Boles letting her wire weaving do the talking for her.   

We asked Emily why she chose to give her specific presentation and she said, “I pitched, ‘Rethinking Thrifted Clothing—A Start to Sustainable Fashion.’ I chose to pitch this because I’ve done a lot of upcycling in my life, but never really dove deep into why I do it. I wanted to better understand my deeper thoughts on the matter and explain them in a way that was entertaining and educational.”  

Our final category was Indigenous Arts, where Ella Sherin stole the show with her modern take on traditional art. She uses traditional techniques meshed with modern themes to carry on her people’s tradition into the current age.   

At the end of the competition, we were able to reward six first-place prizes of $500 to each category winner and $300 to the second-place winners.   

We found ourselves wishing we could award each student a prize, so after compiling their works for the presentations we decided that every competitor would earn $100 for coming out and sharing their work.   

Looking back at this competition, we cannot express how grateful we are for the turnout and the amazing students that participated. By running this event, we hope it played a role in pushing participants to keep pursuing their passions and most importantly, to use it to make an impact in our community.   

A huge thank you goes out to all of the judges who helped make this competition possible. We also would like to thank the Accelerate Montana team for their sponsorship and the Davidson Honors College for Hosting this great event.