Interpret your lockdown experience through art to win prizes and support VP
Lockdown: a word most of us had probably never spoken a year ago, if we even knew it. A word now so common that Collins Dictionary named it 2020’s Word of the Year. A word that encapsulates the shared experience of millions of people around the world as we grapple with the physical and existential threat of Covid-19. A word that forms the theme of our 2021 lockdown Art Competition.
Looking Out from Lockdown. What does that phrase mean to you? Do you feel trapped, isolated? Like time or opportunities are slipping away? Or are you looking forward hopefully to a time in the vaccinated future? To embraces with family and friends? Has lockdown brought about positive changes, such as an appreciation of the little things in life, your local area?
Art is a way of expressing our shared experience. So we’re inviting you to interpret this theme - Looking Out from Lockdown - through the artistic medium of your choice. Important: you don’t need any prior experience of making art to enter! It’s simply about having a go and expressing yourself - and raising a bit of money to support the development of our online programme. We’ve got some cracking prizes to encourage you:
Category | Photography | 2D art (painting, drawing, collage, digital art etc) | Writing (poetry & prose) |
First Prize | Choose a Jessops Academy photography course | Bespoke picture framing of your winning piece by TPF Studio | Choose a Creative Writing Ink course |
Second Prize | Two books of your choice from Introducing Books | Two books of your choice from Introducing Books | Two books of your choice from Introducing Books |
We're incredibly grateful to our wonderful sponsors without whom this competition wouldn't be possible.
Click their logos to find out more about them.
There’s no hard-and-fast criteria, no scoring matrix, and no lower or upper age limit. We’re simply looking for art which relates to the theme and speaks to us in some way.
We’ve assembled a group of art-loving amateur critics from our supporter base. They will whittle down the entries into a shortlist before finally deciding on a winner and runner-up in each category. There is also a “People’s Choice” prize for the piece of work which gets the most likes on our Instagram feed, where we’ll post every single entry.
Over the next few weeks, we'll be sharing videos from a few of our esteemed judges, some of whom have had long careers in the category they're judging. First up is Ian, who'll have a critical on the written entries. Watch the video to find out what he's looking for.
Read more about how Villiers Park helped spark Ian's passion for learning
Like most charities, the past year has been really tough for us. More than ever, we rely on donations to help us develop the resources our Future Leaders need to reach their potential. We also recognise that many of our supporters have been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. So rather than having a mandatory entrance fee, we’re asking you to please give what you can, with a suggested minimum donation of £10.
Simply send us the best quality picture of your entry that you can to artcomp@villierspark.org.uk by 5pm on Friday 19 March. If your piece is 2D (drawing, painting etc) and you can scan it, all the better. Larger files may be too big to email as an attachment. In that case, you could use DropBox, WeTransfer, Google Drive or another cloud storage system to send it.
Include a few words about your piece: how it meets the theme, what inspired you to make it and so on. You can say as much or as little as you like.
Please include your full name, address and age with your submission. We’ll only ever use your initials when posting a picture publicly, e.g. "EW, 23, Brighton". We will use full names when we announce the winners, unless you ask us not to.
If you have Instagram and want us to mention you in our posts, make sure you give us your username when you submit your piece.
Here are some amazing examples of other lockdown art from the past year: