SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) announced this past week the launch of the first annual SPARC Discovery Awards, a “contest to promote the open exchange of information”. The theme of this year’s contest, Mind Mashup, calls on entrants to illustrate in a short video the importance of sharing ideas and information of all kinds.

While this challenge is clearly in line with CC’s goals and mission, SPARC has gone a step further by making CC-licensing a required step in the submission process. Contestants are allowed to use the licence of their choosing, as long as it doesn’t contain the ND condition, and in doing so, SPARC creates a contest that educates two fold. Not only will the entrants create short films about the sharing of information, but they themselves will partake directly in the process, crafting films that will be both educational in content and in practice.

To get more info on the SPARC Discovery Awards, go here. The winner will receive $1,000 and entries will be judged by an esteemed panel which includes both Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and documentary filmmaker Peter Wintonick.