NEWS RELEASE
SUSTAINABLE ORILLIA
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Following on the success of the 2024 Sustainable Orillia (SO) Student Art Contest, Ontario Species Need Your Help!, SO is pleased to announce its 2025 contest based on the theme, Our Actions Make a Difference!
The contest will run from March 1 until May 30, 2025.
Sustainable Orillia is pleased to announce that five local businesses are sponsoring this year’s contest: Manticore Books, Scott’s Garden Centre, Jack & Maddy — A Kids’ Store, Creative Nomad Studios and Cloud Gallery. Please let these businesses know that you appreciate their support of our local community’s young people — and of Sustainable Orillia.
Here in Canada, we live in a pretty wonderful world. There is beauty everywhere. There are people, plants and animals that do amazing things. Recent political challenges have made all of us more aware of how much we value this country we live in. Still, all of us are aware that there are also things that threaten our world — pollution, careless or thoughtless actions, and the consequences of climate change: fire, flood and storms and, yes, the ongoing snowfalls that are clogging our roads and highways during this cold, wintry weather.
The 2025 Student Art Contest asks students to think about the many things that we do that can harm our environment in some way — from putting salt on our wintry roads to using too much energy in our homes to wasting food. It invites students in our local elementary and secondary schools to take a look at actions we can take to make our environment cleaner, healthier and more sustainable — to think about the many things we can do to make our world a better place.
Contest packages will be in local schools by March 1. The three-month period of the contest is intended to allow teachers to fit the contest into their curriculum at a time that works best for their classes. We hope the contest will lead to discussion of these actions in their classrooms.
It is SO’s hope that the contest will inspire students and teachers to explore this issue of our actions, and — after doing so — that students will decide on a particular action (one is enough, but they might want to include more) that they’d like to celebrate in a drawing, painting or a mixed media piece, accompanied by a short statement of why they chose that particular action.
The contest is open to all Orillia-area students, elementary and secondary. Contest packages will be delivered to schools by Friday, Feb. 28. Having been reminded that some students in the area are home-schooled, we will also make contest packages available at Manticore Books in downtown Orillia. (Thanks, Manticore.)
The contest ends on Friday, May 30, 2025. Of the entries submitted, several will be selected for inclusion in Sustainable Orillia’s 2026 art calendar. An event in June will see cash prizes awarded to students whose work is chosen, as well as an award to the school with the most entries. The artwork will be on display at Hibernation Arts Studio on Peter Street in September.
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