Tag Archive for: carpe diem

National Open Art Competition 2017: Competition of the Month!

What is the National Open Art Competition?

  • National Open Art Competition 2017.
  • Ever produced a piece of art that you’re really proud of? You might want to develop your artistic style further by entering the National Open Art Competition.
  • Great prizes up for grabs.
  • The following mediums will be accepted: paintings, drawings, miniature drawings/paintings/wall hung installations, original prints, photography, wall hung installations, digital art, moving image.
  • Competition closes 9th July 2017.

national-open-art-competition-paintbrush

Who can enter?

  • You must live or be professionally based in the United Kingdom or the Republic of Ireland to be eligible for entry.
  • For the main art competition, you must be 15 years of age by 1 September 2017.
  • To enter the Children’s Competition, you must be 14 years of age or younger on 1 September 2017.

national-open-art-competition-coloured-pencil

What are the size limitations?

  • Adult Competition:
    • Max size of Artwork: Width : 153cm x Height : 153cm x Depth : 30cm including the frame.
  • Miniatures
  • Children’s Competition:
    • Max size of Artwork: Width : 50cm x Height : 50cm x Depth : 30cm including the frame.
  • Max duration of Moving Image: 3 minutes (180 seconds) including any credits.

national-open-art-competition-installation

How to enter:

  • Head to the website to register.
  • Registration for the adult competition (15 and above) costs £12, which includes your first submission. You may enter up to three more submissions at a cost of £12 each.
  • Registration for the Children’s Competition (under 15s) costs £5, which entitles you to enter one submission. Children may enter up to two more submissions at a cost of £5 each.
  • NB: There is a special offer for bulk school entries: £10 for 10 children. Please email Anne for a code and instructions.
national-open-art-competition-previous-winner

“The Day That Bowie Died”, Philippa Paterson, Best Portrait Award 2016

We promote exciting opportunities for young people as part of our Carpe Diem youth initiative. Head to the Carpe Diem section of our website for our full catalogue of upcoming student opportunities 🙂

For more information on this particular competition, head to www.nationalopenart.org.

Until next week!

The Boomerang Team

 

Carpe Diem Poster: Unleash Your Awesome!

Sooo… can we tell you about our brand new Carpe Diem poster? (Yes, we are very excited).

By this point, you should definitely have heard about our brilliant Carpe Diem youth initiative.

No?

Here’s a quick re-cap:

The Carpe Diem initiative aims to inspire young people (from as young as 4 all the way up to 18yrs) to get out there and grab life’s opportunities. You’ll learn something new, gain some useful skills and most importantly, have some great experiences!

carpe-diem-poster-fullCarpe Diem Poster

With hundreds of fantastic opportunities out there, we wanted to get the message out to as many young people as possible.

So we’ve designed our very own Carpe Diem poster which captures the essence of what this initiative is all about.

We printed 1000 posters and delivered them to hundreds of schools up and down the country. What better way to reach our target audience (you) than to go straight to the environment you spend so much of your time in?

Unleash Your Awesome

The Carpe Diem team wanted the poster tag-line to more or less sum up what we want you to get out of visiting Carpe Diem.

After brainstorms, mind maps, market research and everything in between, we came up with “Unleash Your Awesome”.

Now all we need is a little bit of help to get the word out even more – so if you see an opportunity you think a friend would like, let them know! For example any budding artists might be interested in the National Open Art Competition. It’s now open for entries 🙂

What do you think?

 

 

 

 

Carpe Diem Initiative: What’s It All About?

The Carpe Diem Initiative – Our Story

We launched the Carpe Diem initiative because we saw an opportunity.

An opportunity to inspire teens across the UK with a site unlike any other.

Young minds are constantly learning, discovering and developing. Here at Boomerang Education, we understand the importance of ensuring a student’s time at school is as fulfilling as possible. This means encouraging teens to make the most of their time both in and out of the classroom.

Our Carpe Diem initiative focuses on helping pupils to develop truly beneficial skills for use in school and in later life.

carpe-diem-initiative-sport

What is Carpe Diem?

Think of Carpe Diem as the friendly, super-talented child of Boomerang Ed.

The Carpe Diem web page highlights a broad range of nation-wide opportunities, challenges and competitions. We encourage students of all ages to set new goals, stretch themselves and begin to shape their own futures.  We’ve brought together all of these opportunities on our website, which is regularly updated, making it as comprehensive a directory as possible.

We want to get as many young people involved as possible. There’s something for everyone, whatever their passion or interest!

Not only can young people make a start on the building blocks of an impressive CV with skills that will stay with them for life, but they might even discover a new talent.

Want to find out more about Carpe Diem? Just get in touch with a member of the Boomerang team 🙂

carpe-diem-initiative-friends

2017 Wicked Young Writer Awards Now Open: Competition of the Month!

What are the Wicked Young Writer Awards?

  • The Wicked Young Writer Awards are sponsored by the award-winning musical Wicked in association with the National Literacy Trust.
  • Her Royal Highness, The Duchess of Cornwall is Patron of the Awards, set up to recognise excellence in writing & creativity and to help develop literacy in young people.
  • Acclaimed author & illustrator of the How to Train Your Dragon books, Cressida Cowell, will return as Head Judge for the awards. Michael Morpurgo is also honorary judge of the awards.
  • Watch this video on the 2016 Awards to see how the Awards can benefit pupils.
  • NB: The For Good Award for Non-Fiction, is also open for 15-25 year olds to write essays/articles that recognise the positive impact that people can have on each other, their communities & the world we live in.
  • To find out more about the competition, check out our Carpe Diem entry, which contains all the details.

wicked-young-writer-awards-2010

Prizes!

  • All winners will receive 4 tickets to see the London production of Wicked at the Apollo Victoria Theatre and the opportunity to meet cast members after the show along with an exclusive backstage tour.
  • Younger categories (5-7, 8-11 and 11-14) also win £50 worth of books/eBooks tokens to spend, as well as £100 worth of books for the winners’ school library donated by Hachette Children’s Books and a bespoke Wicked workshop for their school!
  • Older categories (15-17, 18-25 and For Good Award for Non-Fiction) also win £50 worth of books/eBooks tokens to spend and an exclusive writing experience with one of the Awards’ literacy partners.

wicked-young-writer-awards-poster

How to Enter:

Enter Guardian Young Critics 2016: Competition of the Month!

This month, we suggest you enter the Guardian Young Critics Competition 2016.

Each month we’ll be highlighting a fabulous competition for young people. You can find our full range of competitions on the Carpe Diem page here. We also include Carpe Diem opportunities throughout our school planners, so if you’ve got a Boomerang planner, take a look!

What is Guardian Young Critics?guardian-young-critcs-1

  • The Guardian Young Critics Competition is for budding writers under the age of 18.
  • All you need to do is write a 500 word review on one of these books:
    1. Zana Fraillon, Bone Sparrow
    2. Alex Wheatle, Crongton Knights
    3. Malorie Blackman, Chasing The Stars 
    4. Tanya Landman, Hell and Highwater
    5. Brian Selznick, The Marvels
    6. Giancarlo Gemin, Sweet Pizza
    7. Martin Stewart, Riverkeep
    8. Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock, The Smell of Other People’s Houses
  • The judges will be looking for the most interesting, entertaining and thought-provoking reviews. Try to capture and express any strong reactions you felt when reading the book – positive or negative!

How do I enter?

  • Once you’ve written your book review, fill out the competition entry form which you’ll find here.
  • Make sure your book review reaches the Guardian team by 17th October 2016.

What are the prizes?guardian-young-critcs-2

Ten individual winners will receive:

  • A complete set of the eight books we’ve listed above
  • £20 National Book Tokens gift card
  • The chance to attend the Award Ceremony  due to take place in London, 17th November 2016

If you have any questions or queries about entering this competition just drop us a tweet or contact us here.

PS: You can also enter this competition through your school – just ask us for more info.

Good luck!

Promoting Opportunities for Young People

Here at Boomerang Education, we’ve noticed that, frustratingly, opportunities for young people haven’t been very obvious to the students themselves.

This is where Carpe Diem comes in.

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Carpe Diem homepage

What is Carpe Diem?

Carpe Diem is a youth initiative that showcases hundreds of nation-wide competitions, youth programmes and work experience opportunities to young people.

Students can simply head directly to the Carpe Diem online area.

Here, students will find categories, from English, to Higher Education, to Art & Design.

These are filled with opportunities to explore both in and out of school.

promoting-opportunities-for-young-people-3

Help us promote opportunities for young people

I’m a teacher, how can I get involved?

There are a number of ways you can get involved in this exciting new project:

  • Tell your students about Carpe Diem. This is the quickest and easiest way to spread the word in school. We want young people to get involved in as many exciting new opportunities as possible!
  • Incorporate aspects into your lesson plans. For example, you could sign your class up for the Big History Project. Why not take a look at the ‘English’ category and set one of the creative writing competitions as a homework task?

Carpe Diem in school planners

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Carpe Diem in school planners

The great thing about Boomerang school planners is that they promote all of these fabulous Carpe Diem opportunities on every page.

This means that students can read about things like the St John Ambulance Cadet Program or the BBC Proms Inspire Scheme, as they look through their homework diary.

What next?

Be sure to follow us on Twitter by clicking here for regular tips and updates for educators.

Help us spread the word about Carpe Diem opportunities by sharing this article!

PS: If you have any ideas on how we could improve Carpe Diem, just leave a comment below or drop us  a tweet 🙂

 

Carpe Diem Update! Broadening Students’ Horizons.

If you follow our student Twitter account then you’ll know all about the exciting new student opportunities that we showcase as part of our Carpe Diem initiative.

This summer we’ll be focusing on a couple of things:

  1. Career Opportunities:

It’s that time of year again where lots of students start to panic when they haven’t managed to find summer work experience. It can be difficult to know where to start, so we’ll be highlighting some great companies that offer programmes to young people.

Whether pupils are looking for work experience or internships, there’s something out there for everyone. We’re here to make things that little bit easier!

So if you know someone who’s stuck for work experience ideas, just point them to our Carpe Diem page – we have a handy ‘Industry & Careers’ category that we are constantly adding to.

2. Getting Involved:

As tempting as sitting in front of a games console for 6 weeks can seem at the beginning of summer, we know that young people want to make the most of the summer hols. That’s why we’re featuring a range of activities, competitions and youth programmes for children of all ages: from 4-18 yrs.

There are loads of categories to choose from so there’s really no excuse not to get involved!

If you think we’re missing anything at all, or you’d like us to cover another category, send an email to natalie.allee@boomerang-ed.com  or just drop us a tweet if that’s easier – we always love to hear from you!