JOPLIN, Mo. (AP) - Organizers of Missouri's bicentennial celebration are asking communities to contribute to a quilt and a photography project two years ahead of the event.
The event's organizing groups have already launched several projects to encourage communities to share their history and traditions in the state's 200th anniversary celebration on Aug. 10, 2021, the Joplin Globe reported.
The photography project involves building a visual record of Missouri history through a collection of 200 photos. The organizing groups have also asked every county and the city of St. Louis to make a single block for the quilt project. Both projects will tour across the state next year and in 2021.
Organizers are launching three more community projects ahead of the event.
"We wanted projects that were easy to engage in and also produced content that has use long past the bicentennial," said Michael Sweeney, a coordinator for the bicentennial. "For example, the photographs are going to become part of the permanent collections at the State Historical Society of Missouri."
The historical society is one of the organizing groups spearheading the community projects, along with the Bicentennial Alliance, which is a nonprofit coalition working to develop and promote the event.
Communities have until Labor Day this year to send in their submissions for the quilt project. The deadline for the state's photographic history is Nov. 1.
"This has been a very bottoms-up, grassroots sort of thing, and we tried to structure it so any community of any size can find a way to get involved in this," Sweeney said. "We believe this is going to be an opportunity for communities to pull things to the surface we could never have seen before."