VOICES OF FREEDOM

Submission Deadline: EXTENDED to Sunday, June 20th by 11:59 p.m.

Voices of Freedom is an art contest for First Bricks students. The focus of Voices of Freedom is to shine a light on conflict and its impact on young people. This provides a safe space where young people can start discussions, freely express themselves about what they experienced.

Voices of Freedom provides a place for young refugees to reflect on and share their experiences. The deadline for this art contest is 11:59 p.m. on June 20th, 2021. This is World Refugee Day, a day designated to honor refugees and raise awareness about their plight in efforts to protect their human rights.

Contest Requirements

Each participant is required to submit one (1) piece of artwork and a supplemental writing piece (500 words/3,000 characters max.). Please include which topic your artwork focuses on, why you chose that topic, and emotions and experiences that are connected to the piece.

Judging Guidelines

Every submission will go through a pre-selection process done by headteachers. The chosen submissions will then move on to be scored by our panel of expert judges against a 5-point scoring system. Headteachers of the First Bricks’ classrooms will do a “pre-selection” of up to 20% of the overall class submission total. Therefore, if there are 15 submissions in a class of 30, 3 of the best submissions will be selected to move on to the next and final round of judging that will done by our hand-selected panel of expert jurors. Each participating headteacher is required to submit a minimum of 2 and a maximum of 6 artworks. Our panel of expert jurors will score these pre-selected submissions against a 5-point scale.
The winners of Voices of Freedom are scheduled to be announced on June 30th, 2021.
Submissions are open to ALL FIRST BRICKS STUDENTS (regardless of their age, gender, location, education, sexual orientation, race, etc.). *No art education necessary.

Below are the categories/topics you can focus on:

Hiding from unlawful persecution
Journey to freedom
Something of sentimental value you carried with you to freedom OR something of sentimental value you had to leave behind that you did not want to
Arrival to freedom
Life Now

How to upload your art: Take a picture of your submission piece, save it as a “JPG” or “PNG” and submit it along with your supplemental writing piece.

Contest Winner Prizes:

First Price:$300
Second Price:$200
Third Price:$100
Five Mentions:$50

Join The Competition

JURORS

Elizabeth Albert is a visual artist, writer, and curator based in Brooklyn, New York, and associate professor at St. John’s University, where she teaches in the Department of Art and Design and the Institute for Core Studies. Her mixed media landscape-based paintings explore nature through the combined lens of mental, physical, and pictorial space. Her paintings and works on paper have been widely exhibited, and she is the recipient of numerous awards including the NEA/Mid-Atlantic Arts Council Fellowship, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Fellowship, and the Furthermore Grants in Publishing, among others. www.elizabeth-albert.com

Owen Duffy is an art historian, curator, and educator. He holds a Ph.D. in Art History from Virginia Commonwealth University with specializations in Post-War American Art and South Asian Modern and Contemporary Art. He is the Director of the Yeh Art Gallery at St. John’s University where he also teaches in the M.A. in Museum Administration program. sjuartgallery.org

Christopher Lauto is an artist and educator whose work focuses on illustration, animation, and design. His work primarily focuses on creating dynamic narratives in Linoleum. He teaches in the Visual Arts Department at the Smithtown Central School District in New York. He is also a professor at St. John’s University where he teaches Visual Narrative among other fine arts courses. www.christopherlauto.com

Iandry Randriamandroso is a muralist, graphic and community artist whose work is primarily concerned with human rights and environmental issues. He holds a M.A. in Community Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art (Baltimore, MD). His goal is to create art that is inclusive and accessible to everyone. He uses his artworks as educational tools to facilitate inclusive and hands-on presentations, community arts workshops, art classes and mural projects in public and private venues. He is also an art instructor at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. www.bmorebirds.com

Thomas Sideris is an award-winning journalist, writer, and documentary creator. His academic background includes political science and public administration, and he is a Ph.D. candidate in Human and Social Geography from the Harokopio University of Athens. His journalism and documentary work are primarily concerned with human and social rights as well as freedom of speech, and have reached international recognition receiving numerous awards in Europe and the United States. Most recently, his acclaimed film “The River” follows refugees along the difficult and dangerous journey from Syria and Turkey across the Evros river and into Europe. He has also written 7 books, the latest one titled “The Trains of Silence”, about the holocaust and survivors from the Nazi Terezienstadt and Treblinka camps.