The Pollinator Project has celebrated the winners of its annual schools art competition, with this year’s event also marking a major milestone as the programme received its 10,000th entry.
Samuel Bouwer Smith, Juno Bamford and Arthur Carré were awarded first, second and third prizes respectively, while Daisy Lower, Sophie Renouf and Lewis Pengelley won the category awards.
“Their creativity has been fantastic, they have amazed us with their use of colour, natural materials and collage. We love the sense of fun too, just look at the eyes on Lewis’s entry,” said Sharon Hickman from the Pollinator Project. “Every year we visit every primary school, do a special assembly and hand out competition entries. After that it’s down to the children, the schools, and parents to find inspiration, to get involved and to meet the deadline!”
The standard of entries was so high this year that the Pollinator Project introduced a special additional award to celebrate the competition’s 10,000th entry since it was launched.
Sharon continued: “To celebrate the 10,000th entry since we launched the competition we decided we would pick out the most realistic entry, the one that most closely copied a real solitary bee. It was really tough and we had to whittle down the entries and check with the best experts on the island. The answer was unanimous in the end and we picked the bee created by Isla Aylward from St Anne’s school in Alderney.”
She added: “Congratulations to all of our winners and well done to everyone who took part. A special mention must go to Samuel as well. This isn’t the first time he’s won in our competition. There is a budding artist there at Castel school.”
The winners were:
- 1st prize: Samuel Bouwer Smith, Castel
- 2nd prize: Juno Bamford, St Martins
- 3rd prize: Arthur Carré, Vale
- Pre-schools prize: Daisy Lower, Monkey Puzzle, King’s
- SEN prize: Lewis Pengelley, Le Rondin
- Wells prize: Sophie Renouf, Mare de Carteret
- The Pollinator Project prize: Isla Aylward, St Anne’s, Alderney
Linda Boucher-Harris from sponsor Rothschild & Co said: “Connecting children with nature like this is so important. It’s lovely that in this digital age we can support a programme that is such fun and relies on practical and creative skills. This is the 2nd year we have been involved in supporting the Pollinator Project with its flagship programme and we are delighted to be part of it.
“Prize giving was very special. It’s not just the prizes for the winners and their schools, and t-shirts printed with their winning entry, it’s the excitement, the proud parents and grandparents, everyone plays their part. We are very happy to get involved and enjoyed it immensely too.”
The winning artwork is now on display at the Guille-Allès Library until the end of July, giving families and visitors the chance to see the creativity of children from across the islands.
“As a family we love continuing this connection with the Pollinator Project,” said Jayne Wells. “It’s amazing to see all the entries hanging in the Guille-Allès library and we know that Barry, who co-founded the Pollinator Project back in 2017, would have been delighted. The art competition was very dear to his heart, for him it combined art, science and education. That’s what the Pollinator Project is all about. We picked the entry from Sophie Renouf because it best represented those different elements. It’s been very carefully thought through and put together.
“We love the thought that all the entries are on display until the end of July and everyone can come in and find theirs if they look hard enough,” said Jayne.
