Vans Custom Culture Art Competition
Vans invites high school art students to join in the eighth annual Vans Custom Culture art competition to embrace youth creativity and support arts education. Starting January 3 through February 10 at 5 p.m. high school art teachers can register their classes to compete for the grand prize of $50,000 towards its art program by creating their most artistic and inventive designs using blank Vans shoes as their canvas.
In seven years, Vans Custom Culture has empowered hundreds of thousands of U.S. art students and has donated more than $745,000 to high school art programs and art education.
Students will be provided with four pairs of blank Vans shoes, which they will reimagine to represent four themes of the Vans’ “Off the Wall” lifestyle: action sports, arts, music and local flavor.
Vans employees and an internal judging panel will assist in selecting the top 50 schools to be featured as semi-finalists. Those 50 schools will then be posted online for a public vote on the Vans Custom Culture website from April 26 – May 10, to help determine the top five schools. The top five finalists will be awarded an all-expense paid trip to Los Angeles to showcase their designs at an event to a panel of celebrity judges. In partnership with LCAD, Laguna College of Art + Design, Americans for the Arts, Blick Art Materials and Journeys, the overall winner will earn $50,000 and sponsored related prizes for additional funds towards their school’s arts program. The four runner-up schools will each be rewarded $4,000 for their participation.
This year, Vans Custom Culture will introduce a new component to the competition – Customs. Schools will be given the additional challenge of creating a design or pattern to match the theme, ‘Technology in Design.’ Even though Customs will be part of the overall submission, it will be judged and prized separately from the grand prize of $50,000. Vans will award the winning school with $5,000 towards its art program and up to 25 pairs of shoes featuring the newly designed custom print.
The winner will be announced on May 5 on the Vans Customs site.
