We believe that the holistic development of students is necessary to succeed at a global level. Hence, three new Visual Arts, Creative Writing, and Photography contests were introduced last year.

CIAC, the Visual Art Contest, is designed to provide students with an opportunity to engage in imaginative and innovative thought and action and to develop the ability to communicate and represent their thoughts, feelings, and ideas creatively.

The theme for the 2024 Art contest is “Robotics in Healthcare.” Students are required to use their creativity and imagination to create a blueprint of how they envision and represent this in an image/scenario.

• Education in the arts is essential to students’ intellectual, social, physical and emotional growth. It enables them to create ideas and images that reflect, communicate, and change their views of the world.
• The expectations in this contest align well with the arts curriculum and its expectations around the four central ideas of developing creativity, communicating, understanding culture and making connections.
• This contest focuses on traditional arts of drawing, painting and sketching.
• Students will be generally evaluated on elements of line, shape and form, space, color, texture and value as well as various principles of art.
• The evaluation rubric used in the contest provides further details on how the contestant's work is evaluated and graded.

Contest Eligibility: Open to students in Grades 5-10 (younger students are welcome to join. We will not hesitate to award exceptional talent).

Contest Levels: 3 levels based on the student’s current school grade

• Junior Level: Grades 5 & 6
• Middle Level: Grades 7 & 8
• Senior Level: Grades 9 & 10

Contest Date:

• Submission open: April 13 - 27, 2024

CONTEST FORMAT

• The contest is online, and students will be asked to submit their artwork.
• They can submit a high-quality PDF of their digital artwork or a picture of their actual physical drawing/painting.

Originality: We are looking for original ideas in these contests. We will conduct checks for plagiarism. So, please be sure to trust yourself and be authentic. We want to see the world through your eyes. You may surprise the world through your insight. Please create something you will be proud of, regardless of the outcome of this contest.

• Gold Awards: Top 1% of students for each contest level. The award includes a customized medal & e-certificate.
• Silver Awards: Top 2-3% of students for each contest level. The award includes a customized medal & e-certificate.
• Bronze Awards: Top 4-6% of students for each contest level. The award includes a customized medal & e-certificate.
• Honors Award: up to the top 10% of students in each participating school based on the minimum cut-off. It includes a customized medal & e-certificate. Individual participants will also be eligible for this award.
• Certificate of participation: Given to all participants​.

* Due to resource constraints, only personalized e-certificates will be sent to students and teachers outside Canada. We intend to provide everyone with the opportunity to participate and gain experience.

• If you are a school staff interested in participating, contact us at info@ckstem.org. We will get you started within a week.
• If you are an individual participant, you can enroll here. You must create the first if you don't have an account at our contest portal already. You can find instructions to create your account account at https://www.competitivekids.org/blog/registration.

You can download the Canadian Innovation Contests (CIC) brochure from here.