One Spark festival attendees cast nearly 120,000 votes during the Jacksonville event that ended Sunday. The top creators walked away with hundreds of thousands of dollars to pursue their ideas.
Closing ceremony emcee Doc Waller started with some stats, like the number of people who visited downtown Jacksonville for this year’s festival.
“Over 300,000!” he shouted. “That’s crazy!”
And $350,000 was the amount of money divided between award winners.
Juries awarded $15,000 to the winner in each category. For art, that was a movie called “The Gray Area” about what it’s like to be a masculine woman.
Christina Gray was one of those cheering and crying happy tears when the movie won. She says her best friend is “The Gray Area” filmmaker and subject, Keagan Anfuso. Gray says she hopes the movie helps end sometimes painful gender stereotypes.
“’Cause everywhere you go, there out there,” she said. “And that’s why it’s important because we’re trying to make… our children that we’re going to have now live a different life than we did when we were growing up.”
One Spark organizers say, for the first time, a creator project took home two awards, both the Juried Award and the Top-Voted Award in a category. Yoga 4 Change brought home $32,001.11, the largest amount a single creator project at One Spark has ever received in awards and prize money.
The creator project that received the most individual contributions through the One Spark platform also received a $15,000 award. Project STUFFEE received that award for a total of $22,500.
In addition to the $350,000 in crowd funds and cash awards, attendees contributed $93,324.45 to creator projects, representing a greater than 75 percent increase in contribution compared to 2014’s festival.
This year, 229 projects chose to continue their crowd funding campaigns for up to 30 days after the start of the festival, and contributions continue to be accepted for those projects on onespark.com.
Here are this year’s top vote winners in each category:
Art:
1. Airing Grandma’s Laundry and Other Hush Hush Family Secrets: The Movie - $16,026.80 - 802 votes
2. The Yarn Bomb - $909.01 - 710 Votes
3. Let’s Tile Hemming Park - $907.73 - 709 Votes
Education:
1. Adventures of Moxie Girl - $16,423.69 - 1,112 votes
2. Textbook Boomerang - 1,419.85 - 1,109 votes
3. Pik My Kid - $1,058.81 - 827 votes
Health & Science:
1. The Polar Pod - $16,111.30 - 868 votes
2. Olive My Pickle - $891.09 - 696 votes
3. Apple Project - $837.32 - 654 votes
Music:
1. The Band Be Easy - $15,998.67 - 773 votes
2. Brittney Lawrence - $652.95 - 510 votes
3. Firewater Tent Revival - $588.94 - 460 votes
Social Good:
1. Yoga 4 Change - $17,001.11 - 1563 votes
2. P226 - $1,349.44 - 1054 votes
3. Pass That HRO! - $1,249.57 - 976 votes
Technology:
1. The City.Guide - $16,634.94 - 1,277 votes
2. AA Leather Bible Bindery & Custom Leather Shoppe - $825.79 - 645 votes
3. Snap Decision App - $620.95 - 485 votes
