Salina Media Connection has been honored for creativity The organization earned a Best of the Midwest Achievement Award, one of the top festival awards during the recent annual 2022 MediaFest in Madison, Wisconsin.

According to SMC, the award was for a program series of three short videos produced through a Kansas Beats the Virus grant received from the Kansas Leadership Center to promote Covid awareness and vaccinations. The short films were titled Kansas Beats the Virus: VAXX: Origins, Corona Origins and Mask Origins.

One judge commented “Really creative way to promote Covid safety. I was definitely riveted to the screen. I think the throwback nature of the programs was really clever.”  Another said  “These are really creative. Overall this was really creative and an important topic to cover.” Another said ” Interesting way to reach out about getting vaccinated. Old school filming, narration, and characters to collect were kind of neat to see.”

The video series program involved three short one-minute videos covering Covid awareness topics created by Paul Kirkwood. In addition, the grant also involved four collectible baseball-type cards developed by local educator and artist Noah Wellbrock-Talley, A local USD 305 student provided a design for one card.

A limited number of the Covid cards are available through Salina Media Connection.

“This is the second award we have received from the Midwest Film Festival.  We were really proud of our team, ” said Greg Stephens.

Organizers for the project included Genell Heimer, Covid-19 Project Manager with Salina Family Healthcare Center,  Joan Ratzlaff, Salina Workers’ Coalition, Noah Wellbrock Talley, local educator and artist, Paul Kirkwood, Jacob Smith, Greg Stephens, Debora Cox, Nancy Klostermeyer, Alan Hoover,and Melissa Pham, Salina Media Connection group.

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Here are the award-winning videos: