By Steve Cooke
The closing date for entries has been extended to MONDAY 04 OCTOBER 09:00.
To submit entries visit: https://octopus.energy/grantham-art/
Our budding artists aged 12-25 have been given the opportunity to create artworks inspired by locally endangered species, to win £250 cash, plus their artwork painted as a gigantic mural wall!
Through Your Trust, Rochdale is one of the seven UK areas involved in this year’s Grantham Climate Art Prize.
The winning design will be part of a mural in Baillie Street and all entries will be exhibited as part the Gaia programme in venues in Rochdale such as Touchstones and Number One Riverside.
Their work also will be featured in Natural History Museum galleries across the UK and projected on billboards across London for one week.
The brief is to create a mural design that represents a message of hope in the face of climate change and biodiversity loss. Use the Rochdale area as your inspiration.
The artwork had to feature an endangered species that lives around Rochdale.
The highlighted endangered species for us is the Grey Heron, most often be seen wherever it can find food along the edges of our ponds, lakes, rivers, and wetlands. Stalking stealthily amongst the shallows it picks a spot and stands motionless, waiting for its prey to get within striking distance. It’s piercing eyes are perfectly adapted to scan the water whilst its head remains still, and when it locates prey, it can catch it at lightning-fast speeds. As well as fishing it is adept at catching all types of prey: frogs, small mammals, worms, and even ducklings! Grey herons are widely distributed around Europe, Africa, and Asia, and will nest colonially in ‘heronries’ during the breeding season. They build stick nests high up in trees and these are used year after year. Rochdale has the third largest heronry in the whole of the Greater Manchester area.
Other Priority Species on the Greater Manchester & UK Biodiversity Action Plan are: Brown Hare, Floating Water Plantain, Grass-wrack Pondweed, Pond Mud Snail, Slow-worm, Sphagnum Moss, Twite, Water Vole and White-clawed Crayfish.
The winning artwork will be judged on – creativity and originality, inclusion of at least one priority species, reference the local community / area with positive message of hope on climate change/ biodiversity, an image that can be reproduced effectively by an artist as a wall mural.
Their artwork being turned into a beautiful public mural by a local artist, the nominated
artist for Rochdale is the wonderful Bushra Sultana.
Visit: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/grantham/events/grantham-art-prize-2021/
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