Take a step into the Journeys shoe store and look around. There are tons of Vans shoes on the walls, all different colors and sizes. Some have sparkles on them and some have cats. Designs of anything you could think of. Now these designs are coming from inside the walls of our schools and from the creativity of our students.

The Vans Custom Culture Contest for 2015 kicked into gear on the February 17 when blank shoes arrived at the school.

“Stephanie Persyn told me about the opportunity, and I thought it would be a good idea,” said art teacher Jay Langone.

“It could possibly be a good way to raise money for the school but it also is a good way to show off our school, and our creativity. I gave the challenge to my advanced art class because I felt like it was a real world thing. Something that could be more,” added Langone.

The class got four blank solid white Vans shoes. Each template was a different style shoe from Sk8His and slip ons to AuthenticMens and flat 106s. The advanced art students split into groups based on whomever they picked to be with. From there, they had four themes to work with: Art, Local Flavor, Action Sports, Music.

Once they decided on a design they began to move the art from the paper to the shoe. After all four groups were done, they took pictures of their shoes, and uploaded them to the Vans Custom Culture website. From there, the suspense builds as they wait.

The schools will be narrowed down and the submissions ranked to the top 50. The top 10 schools will then have their designs opened to the public on April 24 for voting. The top five will be broadcast on the May 12 and they will be invited to New York City the second week in June for the final event to announce the grand prize winner, who will receive $15,000 for their school’s art program.

“Though I received many cuts, burns and headaches from the fumes,creating a shoe with my group was definitely an interesting and exploratory experience,” said senior Angelica Eagle, a creator of the local flavor shoe. “I never thought that I had the ability to create barn out of popsicle sticks and toothpicks to represent our small, local farming town of Stockbridge.”