(Press Release) Danube Art Master Competition 2019: Winners announced
VIENNA, 8th October 2019 - In a vintage year for young creativity in the Danube River Basin, the judges of the Danube Art Master competition found it especially challenging to pick a winner. Therefore, in 2019 there are three equal winners in the overall artwork category – Austria, Croatia, and Serbia – plus one winner for the video category, the video entry from Croatia.
Photo & Copyright - Winner arts from Serbia, Austria, Croatia (l-r)
Austria’s Lieblingsort (‘Favourite place‘), by first graders of the 1c class of Elementary School Wehlistrasse in Vienna; Serbia’s Dunavsko tkanje (‘Danube fabric‘), by Danica Jović, Nađa Stanković, Jana Mladenović, and Stevan Stojanović from the Primary School "Stefan Nemanja"; and Croatia’s Dunav (‘Danube‘), by Ilija Kovač, Antonio Saks, and Martina Matanovac from the Primary School “Slatinik Drenjski in Drenje“. All three artworks received the same amount of total points from the international jury making them equal first place winners.
"A competition such as Danube Art Master is about bringing environmental issues into our school classrooms, a key part of the broader current focus on climate change," says ICPDR President for 2019, Mr. Péter Kovács. "The quality of entries, and the skills of our young artists seems to be improving with every year, and the theme of Danube conservation is proving a profound source of inspiration.”
The Danube Art Master winners are selected by 13 countries, which share the Danube River Basin, including Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Hungary, Moldova, Romania, Serbia, Montenegro, Slovakia, Slovenia and Ukraine. The competition is open to all children and schools across the 13 countries that make up the Danube River Basin. Around 663 children from 127 schools participated, submitting about 275 artworks and 72 videos including team submissions.
In the video category, Klara Hardi from the OŠ Antuna Bauera school in Croatia won with the short video Danube. Using great video making skills, Klara Hardi showed that #Danube needs help from us. Her clip was an emotive demonstration of removing waste from the Danube, and a striking plea for conservation efforts along the riverbanks.
Second place in the video category went to Slovak students from the Súkromná stredná umelecká School of Design in Bratislava, for their energetic short clip, More planet, less plastic. The main thrust of the clip centred around its final declaration: "Don't be useless and use less".
Water is the source of life – our third place video winners from Tržišče in Slovenia – take water as the source of all life. Thus, they focus their message-heavy clip on the beautiful sound and sight of Danube running water and wildlife, arguing that this is the most vital reason we should keep it clean and accessible to all.
The Danube Art Master competition is an opportunity for the children of the Danube River Basin to consider and discover the health of their local rivers, and a moment to decide how they wish to help preserve these waters for the future. All eligible artists are encouraged to use material directly from the environment itself in the creation of their artworks, and to look at their local surroundings as a key source of inspiration in the process.
The competition was jointly organized by the ICPDR and the Global Water Partnership Central and Eastern Europe (GWP CEE), an ICPDR observer organisation and one of the largest networks focusing on water in the world.
