We are delighted to announce the winners of our annual schools art competition.
A fantastic well done to Samuel Bouwer Smith, Juno Bamford and Arthur Carré who won the 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes. And an extra well done to Daisy Lower, Sophie Renouf and Lewis Pengelley for winning their category prizes too!
” Their creativity has been fantastic, they have amazed us with their use of colour, natural materials, and collage. We love the sense of fun too, just look at the eyes on Lewis’s entry” said Sharon Hickman from the Pollinator Project. “Every year we visit every primary school, do a special assembly and hand out competition entries. After that it’s down to the children, the schools, and parents, to find inspiration, to get involved and to meet the deadline!”
This year the standard was exceptionally high in fact it was so high that the Pollinator Project stepped in with an extra prize. “To celebrate the 10,000th entry since we launched the competition we decided we would pick out the most realistic entry, the one that most closely copied a real solitary bee. It was really tough and we had to whittle down the entries and check with the best experts on the island. The answer was unanimous in the end and we picked this bee created by Isla Aylward from St Anne’s school in Alderney.”
Congratulations to all of our winners and well done to everyone that took part. A special mention must go to Samuel as well. This isn’t the first time he’s won in our competition. There is a budding artist there at Castel school”, said Sharon.
Our prize winners in full
| 1st prize | Samuel Bouwer Smith | Castel |
| 2nd prize | Juno Bamford | St Martins |
| 3rd prize | Arthur Carré | Vale |
| Pre-schools prize | Daisy Lower | Monkey Puzzle- King’s |
| SEN prize | Lewis Pengelley | Le Rondin |
| Wells prize | Sophie Renouf | Mare de Carteret |
| The Pollinator Project prize | Isla Aylward | St Anne’s |
“Connecting children with nature like this is so important. It’s lovely that in this digital age we can support a programme that is such fun and relies on practical and creative skills, said Linda Boucher- Harris from sponsor Rothschild. “This is the 2nd year we have been involved in supporting the Pollinator Project with its flagship programme and we are delighted to be part of it.
Prize giving was very special, it’s not just the prizes for the winners and their schools, and t-shirts printed with their winning entry, it’s the excitement, the proud parents and grandparents, everyone plays their part. We are very happy to get involved and enjoyed it immensely too.”
“As a family we love continuing this connection with the Pollinator Project said Jayne Wells. It’s amazing to see all the entries hanging in the Guille-Allès library and we know that Barry who co-founded the Pollinator Project back in 2017 would have been delighted. The art competition was very dear to his heart, for him it combined art, science and education. That’s what the Pollinator Project is all about. We picked the entry from Sophie Renouf because it best represented those different elements. It’s been very carefully thought through and put together.
“We love the thought that all the entries are displayed and everyone can come in and find theirs if they look hard enough,” said Jayne.
Now in its 8th year the competition is open to all children in pre-schools and primary schools and focuses on different groups of pollinating insects. This year focused on the 80 or more species of solitary bees living in Guernsey like the violet winged mining bee, wool carder bee, and the red mason bee. Each year more than 1300 entries are received from across the Bailiwick. Every entrant gets a free packet of seeds to grow pollinator friendly flowers.
We encourages everyone to do their bit to help our pollinators which are vital to our food, gardens, wildflowers and peace of mind.