Epsom & Ewell Schools
Art & Writing Competition
Invitation
All schools (primary and secondary) in the Borough of Epsom & Ewell are invited to take part in an art and writing competition, where the scope is broadly defined to include anything from paintings and drawings to leaflets, posters, letters, Powerpoint presentations, other persuasive writing, poems, songs and all sorts of digital media such as animations – get creative!
The theme of the competition is "Save the borough's Green Belt".
Our Green Belt
The Green Belt was created around Greater London in the 1930s to prevent urban sprawl by keeping land permanently open. The Green Belt has become even more important in recent decades for many reasons, including:
There has been a dramatic loss of wildlife - the Green Belt helps to preserve biodiversity.
Green Belt land protects us from the worst impacts of climate change. It captures carbon from the atmosphere, acts as a heat sink to reduce peak summer temperatures, absorbs stormwater run-off to reduce flooding of urban areas and improves air quality.
Our borough's Green Belt is currently under threat. Our council's draft Local Plan proposed large scale urban development on a number of the borough's most important Green Belt sites.
Education
This competition provides four major education opportunities:
Art;
Persuasive writing;
Geography: The Local Plan is the front line between physical and human geography. It is where difficult decisions are made about our land and how best to use it, balancing the needs of people and nature;
Citizens of the future: Children can learn about how to actively participate in our society to help make our borough, and the world beyond, a better place. This competition gives our children a safe platform to express their views to people in power. Think of the impact that Greta Thunburg has had – young voices matter.
Local Plan
Epsom & Ewell Borough Council is in the process of developing our Local Plan. This plan will cover a period of about 18 years and will set out how the council will manage the built and natural environment. A draft of the Local Plan was published for consultation in February 2023. It received 1,736 responses from individuals and organisations. This is an exceptionally high number of responses for a borough the size of ours. The consultation included 50 questions and the question that received the strongest response was "Do you support development in the Green Belt", to which 87% of respondents said NO.
Save Epsom Green Belt
This competition is being organised by Save Epsom Green Belt (SEGB) - a not-for-profit organisation formed with the sole purpose of helping to save Epsom & Ewell's Green Belt from inappropriate development. SEGB is strictly apolitical, i.e., we have no alignment or affiliation to any political party.
Competition details
The Epsom & Ewell Schools Art and Writing Competition is open to all children who attend school in the Borough of Epsom & Ewell. All entries to the competition must be made through the child's school.
There is no entry fee or other charges.
Each school should run its own internal competition and submit its best pieces of work in digital form (e.g. photos of or pdf files) to SEGB no later than 11 October 2024. This gives schools time to do some Green Belt / Local Plan related teaching before the Summer and to work out how they are going to run their own internal competitions. Kids can create their art or writing during the Summer holiday and schools can select their best pieces of work (and convert them into digital form if necessary) during the first half term of the 2024/25 school year.
Each school can submit up to 5 entries per key stage to SEGB. We will review the submissions and create a shortlist of 15 pieces of work per key stage (75 in total).
The shortlisted pieces of work will go on public display via our website: save-epsom-greenbelt.org
A panel of borough Councillors will review the shortlisted work and decide their top 5 pieces per key stage. SEGB will review the work and the Councillors' choices and make the final choice of 5 winners per key stage (25 in total). The judging criteria will be:
Understanding of the issues
Originality and creativity
Artistic execution
Overall contribution to helping to save the Green Belt
Competition entrants are kindly requested to keep party politics out of their work as this would prevent us from displaying the work on our website. The winning pieces of work for each key stage will be featured in the Epsom & Ewell Times. Further logistical details to follow in due course.
RSVP
Please respond to this invitation by replying to this email by 24 May (the end of this half term) to let us know whether your school will be taking part in this competition. This will help us with the planning of logistics.
A list of participating schools will be published on SEGB’s website.
Thank you for reading this invitation, we look forward to receiving your response.
