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| Waremu's Winning Art |
Barry extended the contest to a 100km radius of Otorohanga, so students of nearby rural township high schools were invited. High schools in the nearby city of Hamilton were excluded to encourage students from smaller rural high schools to get involved.
The strategy was that family members would attend the exhibition to support their youngsters and be exposed to a variety of art objects seldom seen outside main centre galleries and national art shows.
Following the success of the show, a Rotarian recommended to Barry, “This is far too good to be local, so we should make the student contest a nationwide project.” Barry replied, “Why not go international?”
Having recently retired, Barry thought he may have the time to be the Curator/Organiser because communicating with eight nearby high schools had been pretty straight forward. But contacting every school throughout New Zealand and beyond was a different story.
There was only one viable solution to accepting entries from anywhere in the world – the internet. The club commissioned a software company to design a program whereby students could upload digital images of their art. After the closing date, five judges could individually access the images on their own computers anywhere in the world to grade each artwork on a scale of 1 to 10. The Curator and Chief Judge then selected the best 50 works and called the most highly ranked ten in each section to be couriered for final hands-on judging.
With a year set aside to arrange the project, Barry set to chasing up Rotary clubs across the globe using the internet as the main way of communication. Barry also searched for high schools with websites, and if those had email addresses, he sent off invitations.
Having spent something like 3,000 hours in just 12 months working on the project, Barry was now working through nights chatting to schools, students and supportive Rotarians across the globe via Skype. Wonderful relationships were developing with Rotarians around the world. Newly formed Rotary clubs in Eastern Europe came on board in a refreshing manner. At last the competition was coming together.
Entries were uploaded on line to the special website. Rotarians in New Zealand pledged the entry fees for students who could not afford the $10 cost. Two young artists in Rwanda were sponsored when it was learned that their families’ monthly income was less than the entry fee. A group of children in Israel were sponsored, as were the Lotus Centre Mongolian orphans.
When the contest closed there were entries from 23 countries. The whole thing had grown to such an extent that it was now beyond being a small rural Rotary club project. Arrangements were made for the awards ceremony to be held in conjunction with the Royal Easter Show in Auckland where there is a huge art exhibition and the official awards night is held in front of 2,500 invited guests.
In a first for the century old show, Barry arranged three channel TV coverage of the Rotary section of the awards. Diplomats from the main nations represented were invited to attend and receive the awards on behalf of the overseas students. The winning pieces of art and a selection of the very best entries were all on sale, with the proceeds being remitted back to the young artists.
The winning international entry was from 15 year old Sandrin Mofo in Orangeburg, South Carolina, USA who was originally from Cameroon, Africa. His self-portrait was of professional quality.
The outstanding New Zealand winner was Wiremu Kawiti. His prize was a 21 day trip to the USA as a guest of Rotary Clubs in California, New York, New Jersey and Alabama.
The competition has been extremely successful, so a Charitable Trust was formed to run the competition every two years, with the current round closing on 31 December 2012. Further details are at www.rotoart.org
