Dot-art Schools Competition Launched

dot-art Schools is an interactive, online, inter-school, art competition, taking part on an annual basis and culminating in an exhibition in Liverpool city centre. Open to primary (year 6) and secondary (year 9) schools in the Liverpool City Region. It is designed to nurture talent, raise ambition, and take art out of the classroom and into the real world. With the current threats to creative subjects on the national curriculum, dot-art Schools offers a way of keeping young people engaged with the arts, allows them to see a creative career path, and encourages them to attend exhibitions and engage with culture, outside of school.

How It Works

During the Autumn and Spring terms, each school creates and selects 25 pieces of student work which they feel best represent the talents of their students. These art works are submitted to their dot-art Schools page by February Half Term, then put on display to the world via the dot-art Schools website (schools.dot-art.com).

A panel of art experts will select the top 3 artworks from each school. Students from all the schools in the programme, as well as the general public, will then be able to vote for their favourite piece of art from the judge’s shortlist. During the Summer term, an exhibition will be held at a city centre art gallery showcasing the artwork with the most votes from each participating school.

Prizes

The overall winner of the year 9 entries will win a scholarship to dot-art, giving them a year’s membership to dot-art’s network, allowing them to showcase and sell their work alongside professional artists. (See: http://services.dot-art.com) Two runners up, as well as the winner, will win a selection of art materials and tickets to the latest Tate Liverpool Exhibition.

The overall winner of the year 6 entries, as well as the two runners up, will win vouchers for art materials and tickets to the latest Tate Liverpool Exhibition. All shortlisted artists will be awarded certificates.

This annual programme will encourage healthy competition between students and schools, as well as driving traffic to the site and therefore increasing the audience for the students’ work and the profile of the school. The final exhibition will provide a wonderful opportunity for the successful students to show their work in a public setting and a fantastic way of celebrating the art work created and the school’s commitment to arts education, demonstrating the quality of art produced to parents, families, local authorities and the wider community. Finally the programme can help participating schools meet many of the KS2 and 3 National Curriculum requirements for Art and Design, the criteria outlined in the OFSTED evaluation framework, as well as providing a valuable tool for schools working towards Artsmark status.

Key Dates 2014-15:

• 2nd September 2014 – School recruitment for 2014-15 programme begins.
• 16th December 2014 – Deadline for schools to sign up.
• 16th February 2015 – Deadline for schools to submit work for competition.
• March – April 2015 (dates TBC) – Online voting period.
• May – June 2015 (dates TBC) – Exhibition of winning works.

For more information on dot-art Schools, please visit http://schools.dot-art.com/

Email: schools@dot-art.com

Telephone: 0845 017 6660