Global Canvas winners named at Natural History Museum

The final of the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation’s annual Global Canvas Art and Poetry competition for children showcased a fabulous celebration of ‘Our Precious Planet’, the theme for this year’s event, at the Natural History Museum in London yesterday (March 23).

Over 1,800 children from art groups and schools in the UK and overseas entered the 2017 competition with a shortlist of 15 schools invited to display their work at London’s famous museum.

“Being one of the shortlisted finalists was a prize in itself as choosing the winners from so many inspiring and creative entries was a hugely difficult task,” says DSWF Education Manager, Jo Elphick.

“It was an outstanding shortlist, and in my eyes everyone was a winner,” said wildlife artist and conservationist David Shepherd CBE (85) who attended the event. “That the winners also managed to raise so much money to protect the wildlife that we all love was the icing on the cake.”

The winners were:

First place: Hall Grove, Bagshot

The judges said: They showed us that not only did they have great artistic and poetic skills, they had really thought about the animals that make up ‘our precious planet’, but they also showed amazing and unexpected entrepreneurial skills, thinking outside the box and using the fantastic art that they made for the competition to raise money for endangered animals. We were also really impressed with the quality of the entry and the level of collaboration involved.

Second place: Cranmere Primary, Esher

The judges said: This school had children from age 4-11 involved in their entry, we loved the huge variety of different media used to create their display, the amazing amount of work produced and the quality of it, there was just so much to look at!

Third place: Spratton Hall, Northampton

The judges said: This was a fantastic entry – it was a wonderfully original idea making jewellery boxes in the shape of animals and filling them with poems and individual ceramic animals, there was a huge amount of collaboration involved and an amazing level of detail with something new to see every time you looked at it!

Event sponsor’s Michael O’Mara Books Personal Choice Award: Shottermill Junior School – for its fabulous mixture of words and strong images that are so important in book publishing to express powerful messages. It was a very imaginative piece of work.

David Shepherd Personal Choice Award: David chose the Spratton Hall elephant because of its ingenuity, creativity and the amount of patience it must have taken to make. David said that it had such personality and so much to explore that he kept being drawn back to it.

Guest speaker Jonathan Truss Personal Choice Award: South Farnham School – Jonathan loved the personality that the children had managed to give to their work, particularly the large penguin and the orangutans, and thought the creativity and skill of the sculptures brought the whole display together perfectly.

As part of their prize, the overall winners receive £1,000 (sponsored by Michael O’Mara Books) to donate to the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation conservation project of their choice.

The Global Canvas Art and Poetry competition is part of the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation’s Art for Survival programme. Established in 2004 it aims to encourage young people to express their concern for the environment and, in particular, endangered species with which we share our fragile planet.

This year’s event was sponsored Michael O’Mara Books, the guest speaker was wildlife artist Jonathan Truss.