Eve Jeffery
The results are in and the organisers of the Young Environment Protectors (YEP) high school art competition have announced the winners of the Young Environmental Protectors Art Competition.
The competition was delayed owing to COVID, but last Friday veteran actor Tony Barry, who is the founder and facilitator of YEP and Holley Somerville-Knott YEP’s Patron went to the Casino Christian School on Friday to give out some prizes.
The competition is held throughout the high schools of the Northern Rivers to encourage young students to make their statements on their fears and concerns for the environment that they’re going to inherit.
First, second and third place all received $1,000 and every school that entered also received a map of Australia displaying the 500 Clans and Nations of the original carers and protectors of Gondwanaland.
Tony and Holley spoke at the Casino Christian School’s weekly assembly before announcing the winner made up of a collaborative team of Emily Edwards, Shayla Dufy, Lucy Clark and Isabelle James with their entry entitled Djanangmum On Fire.
Keeping $100 each, the girls donated the remaining $600 of their prize back to the school for an environmental project.
There were winners from two other schools including Kingscliff High, who also had a collaboration of Ashi Hilmer, Ella Cooper, Amber Chailaou and Sabine Rishton-Potter with their photographic collaboration entitled, This Is Rubbish and Murwillumbah High’s Tayha Martin with her mixed media entry called Biodiversity.
Tony Barry said he was happy to congratulate all the participants in the 2020 YEP competition.
YEP Patron Holley Somerville-Knott said it was wonderful to speak to the students who gave their time and energy to create such a thought-proving painting for the YEP project. ‘YEP is all about combining art with activism because both are about creativity, passion and sharing a message with people,’ said Holley. ‘The students at Casino did really well with that.
‘Seeing such commitment from people like Tony Barry to supporting young environmental activists, and such drive from the younger generations in taking climate action gives me a lot of hope about the future.’
Tony said the philosophy behind YEP is to encourage in our youth, an appetite for activism, employing all art forms as a means of protest and disapproval of the wanton destruction of the environment, their legacy, for the sake of short term profit.
Tony and Holley said that the prizes were kindly donated by Alan Hargraves and Rod Halstead, SANTOS Organics and The Byron College. ‘The Byron School of Art and Ross Bishop made a significant contribution to the printing of the maps of Indigenous Nations. These maps were presented to the seven participating schools and the thirty-five other High Schools in the Northern Rivers who were invited to participate, however were unable, because of Covid and other reasons, to compete.
‘I would also like to thank and acknowledge our judges for the generous gift of their time and expertise – Robert Bleakley, Viginia Reid and Lewis de Vere Tyndall. I would also like to acknowledge the contribution made by Stroma Lawson in realising YEP.’
To see the winning and other entries and to find out more about YEP, visit: yep.community.
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