Schools Art Competition 2023

On Monday 20th March, over 60 people including children and their parents, a smattering of grandparents, teachers and friends, together with a number of Rotarians, gathered at the Rose Theatre for the presentation of the prizes to the winners of our Borough-wide children’s Art Competition. The competition was sponsored jointly by the 3 Rotary clubs in the Borough; Kingston, New Malden and Surbiton.

 The response this year had been overwhelming with artwork from over 700 students having been submitted. Our subject was “Our Oceans - what lies beneath the water”. As a result we received pictures of numerous fishes including many very ferocious looking sharks, turtles and sea horses in a variety of sizes and colours, shells and monster crabs in addition to sundry articles of rubbish such as plastic bottles, fishing nets and other types of detritus dumped in the water. 

 Elliott Newton, Kingston Council’s Biodiversity and Environmental Officer, agreed to be our judge for the second year and had eventually managed to whittle the number of entries down to 12 prize winners. He gave a short talk to the gathering on the wonders of sea life and then the award ceremony began. 

The Mayor agreed to present the prizes and was absolutely wonderful with the winning students. He chatted and joked with the children who giggled as the parents took pictures of their ‘winning’ offspring while the rest of the audience chuckled, laughed and clapped.