Orang-Artan Competition Award Winners!

HUGE congratulations to the 30 young artists who received an award!🧡

Our judging panel said choosing the winners was one of the hardest things they've had to do this year - there were so many beautiful pieces of artwork, and so much passion and love for orangutans and wildlife. We're sorry we can't give prizes to everyone, but we're excited to announce that all 87 shortlisted artists will receive a certificate of recognition!

Our Founder and President, Leif Cocks, joined us to share what he loves about orangutans and to highlight what The Orangutan Project is doing to save orangutans, rainforests and other wildlife. 

At the end of the event, our judging panel joined Leif to answer questions about everything from how to improve as artists to whether orangutans have been known to play music!

To see a video of the ceremony, click here: https://event.webinarjam.com/go/replay/11/09mvmarigh3f2

A final HUGE thank you to everyone who made this competition and the prize ceremony possible. Thank you to the parents, grandparents, guardians and friends who entered these young artists. 

Thank you so much to our judges Ben Pearmain, Camila and Chris from Eggpicnic, Emma Quay and Max Hamilton for giving their time and donating artwork and books for our prizes. 🤗

First Prize winners will receive:

• Signed opies of Emma Quay's book Goodnight, Me and Max Hamilton's book My Possum Plays the Drums for the 3-5 age group
• A vibrant new orangutan artwork created by Ben Pearmain for the 6-8 age group
• A gorgeous print of Indonesian animals by Eggpicnic for the 9-11 age group

Thank you also to those who donated to the competition:

• Anchors Aweigh art studio in Wollongong for donating a huge haul of fabulous art supplies
• Mitcham Newsagency in Adelaide for donating books, notepads and coloured pencils
• Doug Gimesy and Heather Kiley for donating copies of their book Life Upside Down
• Tegan Carter and Claudia Sullivan for creating brand new colouring in sheets for our competition

We are also incredibly grateful to our fabulous volunteers who dedicate so much of their time and energy to helping us raise funds and awareness. 🙏 Our volunteers contacted schools, encouraged friends and family to enter, shared messages on email and social media. They then managed the incoming registrations, filling out spreadsheets, and saving artwork for judging. Then they sorted through the 430 entries to create the shortlists. They are the real heroes because we can't do this without them.

Frist Prize Artworks!🎨

And without further ado, we'd like to congratulate the Prize Winners. (Please note - these images have been cropped so they take up the same space on the webpage.)

Age 3-5 colouring in:

• First Prize: Edward Corlette
• Second Prize: Hamish Creese
• Third Prize: Elise Thorburn
• Encouragement Awards: Axel Cleveland and Nina Richter-Scaife
• TOP Staff Judge's Special Mention: Hudson Hengler

Age 3-5 free hand art:

• First Prize: Olivia Bergh
• Second Prize: Matias Sousa
• Third Prize: Guadalupe Cabido
• Encouragement Awards: Sebastião Ferreira and Constança Ferreira
• Judge Emma Quay's Special Mention: Frannie Alpren Nedivi

Age 6-8 colouring in:

• First Prize: Benji Edwards
• Second Prize: Archie Billett
• Third Prize: Ruby Fox
• Encouragement Awards: Jophiel Phillip and K Flanagan
• TOP Volunteer Judges' Special Mention: Nova Barrett

Age 6-8 free hand art:

• First Prize: Macklin Pyke
• Second Prize: Matilda Wheeler
• Third Prize: Saffron Grieve
• Encouragement Awards: Mia Guo and Winter Holm
• Judge Max Hamilton's Special Mention: Lili Kelly

Age 9-11 artistry and creativity:

• First Prize: Hope Watson-Hook
• Second Prize: Avalon Hasluck
• Third Prize: Emily Wu
• Encouragement Awards: Isobel Taylor-King and Vansh Singh
• Judge Ben Pearmain's Special Mention: Natika Clark

Age 9-11 exploration of the theme 'wildlife conservation':

• First Prize: Elisabeth Bauer
• Second Prize: Banita Narula
• Third Prize: Siyan Bao
• Encouragement Awards: Hamish Popple and Yiheng Zhang
• Judge Eggpicnic's Special Mention: Toby Dampney

Our winners came from across Australia including Tasmania, Northern Territory, Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia. They also came from Portugal, the UK, New Zealand, Argentina, the USA and Hong Kong. Congratulations to all!

We hope to see you next year at our second Orang-Artan Competition!