Creative Teacher Celebrates Global Success with Children’s Art Competition

9th December 2008

Is your child a Picasso or Van Gogh in the making or simply keen on drawing and painting? Create&Wait, the free educational online service designed to encourage fun and imaginative learning, is celebrating its successful first year with the launch of a competition to encourage budding young artists to show off their artwork.

Create&Wait was designed by teacher Claire Eastaugh to give junior schoolchildren access to a website that inspires them to produce a piece of their own work within any subject, from art and science to languages and history, and then to email their creation to a panel of specialist teachers for comment*. The novel idea has attracted input from children worldwide.

One of a series of regular free competitions which aim to enliven the learning process and further develop and acknowledge children’s talents, ‘Portraits of People’, is open to all school children aged 7 to 11. Entries will be judged by accomplished artist Tess Barnes, whose recent exhibition ‘Women of Substance’ featured such luminaries as children’s author Jacqueline Wilson and TV personality Carol Vorderman. Prizes to encourage children to put pencils to paper and paint on their pad, include their own winning picture framed and a signed certificate with personal comments from Tess.

“This website was formed because I was so impressed by the pupils’ artwork at the school where I teach,” says Claire, who teaches French at Staines Preparatory School in Middlesex. “I thought it would be a good idea to give all primary school children the chance to show their work and be encouraged to be creative.

”Pupils from schools as far away as Queensland and the Philippines have been contributing and the pupils at my local school look forward each week to seeing their work posted on the web. We are really thrilled with the popularity of the website so far and hope it will continue to inspire children throughout the UK and further afield.”

The closing date for the competition is 31 January 2009 and details, including entry procedures, are on the website, http://www.createandwait.com

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