SC’s largest student talent competition to feature Hootie & The Blowfish | Arts & Culture

The BB&T “This School’s Got Talent” competition is back! South Carolina’s most exciting, fan-voted, state-wide student talent contest is returning for its second year. 

Celebrity judges from GRAMMY Award-winning super-group Hootie & The Blowfish (HBF) will help select the top entries.  HBF bass guitarist Dean Felber and lead guitarist Mark Bryan will join their former tour manager and current annual golf tournament director Paul Graham,to narrow down the pool of talent to twelve finalists.  The final videos will then be posted online and open to your votes!

The student deemed most talented will earn the opportunity to perform LIVE at the televised “South Carolina Teacher of the Year Celebration” on May 1 in Columbia. This year, as an added bonus, the winner will also be invited to perform at the opening concert for the BMW Charity Pro-Am presented by SYNNEX Corporation on May 18th in Greenville. BMW - presenting sponsor of the state Teacher of the Year Celebration - welcomes the talent show winner to perform with members of the Hootie and the Blowfish Band and other celebrity performers.

“We were stunned by the incredibly high quality talent South Carolina students showed last year and are looking forward to seeing what this year’s competition will hold,” said Trip DuBard, SC Future Minds’ executive director. “We’re also very grateful to the Hootie members and to BMW for helping raise the excitement of this contest to an entirely new level.”

The contest is open to public school students between 1st and 12th grades in all South Carolina school districts. To enter, adults 18 or older may submit videos of students showcasing their skills on the South Carolina Future Minds Facebook page.  Videos must be at least thirty seconds in length and may not exceed five minutes in length.

The submission period for video entries began February 1, 2012 and ends midnight (EST) on Sunday, March 11, 2012. Finalists will be announced on or before March 19, and public voting via Facebook will begin immediately afterward.

The winner will be announced on April 2, 2012. Viewers may cast their vote for each video one time per day during the voting period. There are no age restrictions on voting.

For more information about the talent show, visit http://www.facebook.com/southcarolinafutureminds or call 803-741-5646. Watch the “This School’s Got Talent” video introduction at http://scfutureminds.org/blog.