The All-Star Awards Ceremony

The Context

Prior to 2018 the district regularly hosted several student recognition events for different ethnic and cultural groups, each designed to be culturally specific for the group. Due to cuts in the district, they were no longer able to host as many events. Instead, one event was created.

The Challenge

"It is particularly important that we honor our students who represent racially diverse ethnic and cultural groups across the district and have excelled despite the systemic challenges they face every day. At each [previous] event, our diverse communities rallied around our students in acknowledgement of their academic success, resilience, commitment to their culture, and personal development." - From the official announcement of the All-Star Award Ceremony.

The challenge was to make each person feel included and celebrated in one event, even though there were roughly 99 winners and each culture used to have their own dedicated ceremony. I aimed to do this without removing the uniqueness of their cultures butdid not have the time or resources to collect feedback like I wanted to. I was specifically asked to make it feel 'over-the-top' and 'glamorous', which led to the gold-foil VIP badges that we mailed to each winner and the gold sparkle theme. We kept the original logos of the events we merged into this one as well.

The Results

The turnout filled the entire venue. The event happened very recently, so feedback is trickling in positively but it is too early to evaluate. There are plans to recap and adjust next year's rendition based on the feedback we are collecting now. We did what we could with the short timeline, but I look forward to the version we create with feedback from our participants and
involved communities.