The 2043 Wild At Art threatened species art competition is open to all children in Australia aged 5-12 years. This includes external Australian territories.
Competition submissions are open from 9am 17 June 2024 to 5pm 12 August 2024. Entries received after 5pm on 12 August will not be accepted.
Entries must depict native fauna or flora species that are listed as threatened under state, territory or federal law. Entries depicting non-native or non-threatened species will not be considered.
Artworks must be either a painting, drawing, or mixed media work such as a collage. Three-dimensional work, photographs, digitally created work and videos will not be accepted.
Artworks can be made from any traditional media, including pastels, pen, pencil, charcoal, acrylics, watercolour, oils, mixed media, collage, or found materials.
Artworks must be created solely by the child, and must be the child's original creation.
Adults must not actively participate in creating the entry and may only provide encouragement to the entrant, such as helping with research, transcribing young children’s written work, finding references etc.
Exact copies of pre-existing images, including by tracing or colouring in an outline created by another person will be disqualified. ACF use anti-plagiarism technology to detect possible cases of plagiarism.
Individual artworks should be A3 in size, though dimensions may vary. Individual entries up to A2 in size will be accepted. Groupwork entries should be no more than 2 metres x 1.5 metres.
Children must research their chosen species and write a short (50-150 word) explanation of why they chose that particular animal or plant. This explanation forms part of the competition entry requirements.
Entry guidelines
All artworks must be submitted by an adult: either a parent/legal guardian, or teacher or program manager. If a teacher or program manager is registering the child, it is assumed they have received any necessary parental consent.
Artworks must be received in a digital format using the online submission form. Please assist your child/student to create a clear digital copy of their original artwork, by either scanning a copy or taking a photograph.
Please keep the original artwork in the event it is selected for exhibition.
Only one individual work can be submitted for each child, but the same child can submit work as part of a groupwork entry.
Entry criteria and guidelines for groupwork submissions
Groupwork projects are artworks completed collectively by a number of children. They are open only to schools and other art programs.
A school or art program can submit individual artworks by children in a class, as well as a groupwork created by the same, individual children.
The work should be no more than 2 metres x 1.5 metres in dimensions. Other than the size, the same criteria apply as for the individual work: two dimensional, original, paint, pencil or mixed media based. Please try to ensure that the original can be easily rolled up and sent by post (if it is selected for our exhibition event we will need the artwork sent to us and postage can be expensive!)
The teacher can help get ideas together and co-ordinate the project, as long as only the children are working on it. Each child may do a component, with the individual pieces assembled into a complete artwork by the teacher. Or the group may work collaboratively on one piece.
A group could be a whole class, but three is the minimum. Generally we have found that an artwork entry with two members could just as easily have been done by one. If you have a very big group you might want to consider dividing up the class and doing a few different groupworks.
Please submit one written component for each group. The teacher may gather comments from the children and summarise their thoughts, or choose one or two best ones to represent the group. The written comments for the group entries can be longer than 150 words, but please keep them under 250.