NEWS

The fifth VENDEN children’s drawing competition “Water in Our World”, organized annually in honour of the UN World Water Day, ended in April. This time too, the prize fund of the competition reached 8,500 euros - with this amount, educational institutions where the winners study will be able to supplement their sports equipment or to purchase materials necessary for the learning process. The winners were determined both by the assessment of an independent artistic jury and by public vote, while VENDEN awarded one of the more than 8,200 submitted works with a special sympathy award.

VENDEN Marketing Director Jelena Kozlova points out that several records have been broken this year, including receiving approximately 10% more drawings than last year: “We are truly pleased that interest in the competition is growing every year. More and more educational institutions from all over Latvia are sending in drawings in which children creatively and truly reflect their vision of the importance of water in our world. We highly value the contribution of teachers – their ability to inspire children, introduce them to various art techniques and at the same time help them understand the importance of water resources in human life. This year too, prizes will go to laureates in various regions of Latvia, while each participant in the competition will receive a personalized printed diploma for participation. Sincere thanks to teachers and educational institutions for their responsiveness and hard work!”

The largest number of drawings – 2,093 – were sent to the competition by educational institutions from Riga. Teachers in Daugavpils (312 drawings), Valmiera region (299), Jurmala (293), Liepaja (293), Jelgava (278), Kuldiga region (272) and elsewhere were also very active. In total, children’s works from 35 Latvian regions and 7 cities were submitted to the competition.

Again this year, all submitted children’s drawings were evaluated by an independent creative jury, consisting of two artists, members of the Latvian Union of Artists and teachers of the Baldone Art School - Talivaldis Muzikants and Ieva Muzikante. This year, due to the large volume of submitted works, the independent artistic jury had a particularly difficult time making a decision. The evaluation process took more than a week, and each drawing was carefully evaluated in order to single out those that best revealed the depth of the topic, the child’s creative perspective and artistic expression.

In the category of individual works, the jury particularly assessed the child’s independent expression, creativity, original interpretation of the theme, use of colours, quality of composition and overall aesthetic impression of the work. In turn, in the evaluation of group works, the children’s mutual cooperation, preservation of each participant’s individual contribution, compositional unity, creative use of techniques and materials, as well as the supporting role of the teacher in the process of creating the work were of great importance.

The winners, both in the evaluation of the artistic jury and in the public vote, were determined in four categories - according to the age of the authors and the form of the work: individually or in a group. After a thorough evaluation of the works, the artistic jury determined 12 winners, awarded 13 letters of appreciation, as well as almost 120 incentive prizes and about 200 letters of gratitude for artistic performance. The winners of the public vote were determined by the activity of supporters, who voted for the drawings on the website www.udensdiena.lv as from March 20 to March 29. As a result of the vote, 12 winners and 28 incentive prize winners were determined. The educational institution represented by the 1^st place winner in each category will receive 500 euros for the purchase of sports equipment or materials necessary for the learning process, the educational institution winning 2^nd place will receive 300 euros, and the 3^rd place winner will receive 200 euros. Moreover, the authors of the drawings will receive prizes from VENDEN’s cooperation partner, the family entertainment and recreation park ADVENTICA, located in Riga, in the shopping centre “Olimpia”, and gifts from VENDEN.