Contest: Children turn worries about climate change into art

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Deep red Louisiana is not necessarily where you’d expect someone to try to launch an art contest focused on the perils of climate change.

But Frank Eakin, a green energy advocate who grew up in Louisiana and is now based in the Houston area, saw art as an “ideal channel,” particularly for young people, to grapple with such a big, scary and controversial topic.

“They hear a lot about it on television. Their curiosity is drawn, and you can imagine there is some fear,” explained Eakin. bvc

So was born the Climate Champions Youth Art Contest. While he hopes to roll it nationwide over time, a trial run recently occurred in Louisiana.

A native of Bunkie and graduate of Baton Rouge Magnet High, Eakin has had a varied career, including stints building ships and exporting Cajun seafood. With the art contest, he is bringing together his current work in entertainment as well as a separate endeavor involving digital marketing to residences of energy not derived from fossil fuels.

Eakin’s upbringing also brought him into close contact with another cause: racial injustice.

His mother, Sue Eakin, who taught history at LSU Alexandria and died in 2009, spent her life working to prove the truth behind Solomon Northup’s “Twelve Years A Slave,” producing annotated editions of that 1853 memoir, thereby helping to rescue it from obscurity.

The Climate Champions Youth Contest’s trial run in Louisiana began in November. That month, school-age children composed and submitted visual art addressing their concerns as well as offering possible solutions to climate change.

State Librarian Rebecca Hamilton agreed to help, spreading the word about the contest to libraries across the state, which alerted schools to the project. She said she viewed it as...