CPRE Hertfordshire’s 2024 Children’s Art Competition

CPRE Hertfordshire is delighted to announce that submissions are now open for our Children’s Art Competition 2024 for all primary school children in Hertfordshire.

The theme for our Children’s Art Competition this year is:

Why I love the Hertfordshire Countryside

Children can create an artwork portraying anything related to what they love about the Hertfordshire countryside. Their artwork could be related to local wildlife, beautiful scenery, flower fields, trees through the seasons, our precious chalk streams – let their imaginations take over!

There is a prize for the winning school and individual prizes in each age group category, plus a special ceremony in the autumn to showcase and celebrate all our young artists.

The benefits of young people engaging with the countryside have never been more important:

• Children’s mental, physical and emotional health and wellbeing are improved by being in nature and looking at nature.
• Art and nature are likely to play a part somewhere on each School’s Development Plans.
• The countryside and nature bring topics to life across many aspects of the primary school curriculum.
• Appreciation of and connecting with nature is key within the teaching of climate change awareness.
• Art is an inspiring media for engaging with many children and has numerous known emotional, physical, cognitive and learning benefits.
• This is an ideal activity to run at after-school clubs as well as an in-classroom activity.

Please note the closing date for competition entries is Friday 19th July 2024.

Prizes and categories

The Winning School

The winning school will receive nature books for their library and up to £500 to spend on creating an environmentally-friendly outdoor space at their school. For example this could be a gardening space for the children, a nature area, a food growing area, or gardening tools and plants for a learning or after-school club activity.

The winning pupils in the following age categories will receive individual prizes and a certificate

• Reception (1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd prizes)
• Years 1-2 (1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd prizes)
• Years 3-4 (1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd prizes)
• Years 5-6 (1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd prizes)

The colour of autumn trees, the smell of rain after a hot summer’s day, new plants emerging in the spring. What do your children love about the Hertfordshire countryside?

How to enter

We are asking primary school children in Hertfordshire to think about nature all around them to produce a piece of artwork which explores and captures what they love about the countryside.

Terms and Conditions

1. The competition is open to all primary school children in Hertfordshire. If your child/children are home schooled you can still enter using the instructions below but please indicate the ages of the child/children.
2. To make the process simpler, we suggest that schools can select their preferred pieces of artwork and forward 8 pieces of artwork per school, two from each year group: Reception, Years 1-2, Years 3-4 and years 5-6.
3. Entrants are asked to create a piece of A4 artwork in any medium, providing it is original artwork (no computer-generated images).
4. Each entry should be the work of one child only.
5. A digital image of the original artwork should be saved as a .jpg file and attached to an email to jo@cpreherts.org.uk
6. The file name for each piece of artwork should be clearly marked with the entrant’s name, age, school year and school. Example: Gillian W, age 10, Y6, St Hildas School.jpg
7. All entries should be received no later than Friday 19th July 2024
8. By submitting an entry, permission is granted to CPRE Hertfordshire to use that image in the charity’s publicity including website and social media.
9. The winners will be contacted by CPRE Hertfordshire by Monday 9^th September 2024 and invited to our special ceremony.