Art Competition 2025-26

Welcome to our competition page! Every year, we ask young people to create art that looks at the great things and the challenging things about personalised medicine. 

In the fourth year of the competition, we’re looking at the meaning of ‘personalised medicine’. 

Personalised medicine means different things to different people… 

There is no single right answer, and we want to hear about what personalised medicine means to you. 

Maybe for you it’s about all the different things that can be measured to help guide a person’s healthcare, ranging from their height to their heart rate to their genetic code? Or maybe you’re interested in ways clinicians could try to learn what’s really important to the person in front of them, and think about it when planning their care? Perhaps it’s both, or perhaps you have a different idea altogether! 

We would like you to create art that shows us your ideas about ‘personalised medicine’. You could do this on your own, or as part of a team (e.g. as an art club or youth group). 

To give you some ideas, your art could look at: 

We can’t wait to see what you create! Please click on the headings below for more details. 

  • You can make a drawing, a painting, a photograph, a collage, a sculpture – we’re excited to see what you come up with! It needs to be something that you can take a photograph of (so it can’t be a piece of music or a video, for example). 
  • The art must be your own work. If you use pre-existing material (e.g. to make a collage), think about whether you might need permission to use the material from the copyright holder. 
  • Any people in your art should not be identifiable. If you’re doing a picture involving a person, you should draw or paint someone from your imagination rather than a person you know in real life. 

Opens for entries: 1st September 2025 

Closes to new entries: 30th January 2026 at 1pm 

Winner and finalists announced: 25th March 2026 

  • You can enter the competition if you will be in Year 7, 8 or 9 of secondary school (England and Wales), P7, S1 or S2 (Scotland) or Year 8, 9 or 10 (Northern Ireland) on the 1st October 2025. 
  • Your school must be based in the UK, or if you are taught at home you must live in the UK. 
  • You can create art on your own or as part of a team (e.g. as an art club). 
  • The closing date for competition entries is 30th January 2026 at 1pm. Late entries will incur a penalty and may not be accepted. 

Please email a photo of the artwork to cpm@well.ox.ac.uk with subject line ‘CPM competition’ by 30th January 2026 at 1pm together with this form completed by your parent/guardian/teacher. 

Please keep your original artwork safe. If you are a competition winner we might ask you to send it to us for display or scanning (we would pay for postage). 

By entering the competition, you give the Centre for Personalised Medicine permission to share your artwork online and in person (including modified versions of the image, for example cropped versions). The artist’s first name, age when entering the competition, and school name (where provided) will be displayed together with the art. 

The judging panel will be comprised of members of the Centre for Personalised Medicine and their guests. 

The artworks will be judged on: 

  • Relevance – does the image communicate something important about what personalised medicine means to you? 
  • Originality – does the image make you think about personalised medicine in new or challenging ways? 
  • Artistry – does the image capture your attention and make you want to find out more? 

Extra credit may be given where materials have been reused that might otherwise be wasted.

The judges’ decision is final. 

All artists who enter the competition will be sent a digital certificate via email. 

The best entries will be shared online by the Centre for Personalised Medicine, and may be displayed at future events held by the Centre, or form part of exhibitions. For example, winning entries from previous years have been displayed at the Churchill and John Radcliffe hospitals in Oxford, St Anne’s College, the Centre for Human Genetics, and are featured on our website, social media, and in reports relating to the work of the Centre for Personalised Medicine. 

For individual entries, one overall winner will receive £100, one runner-up will receive £50, and highly commended entries will receive £10. For group entries, one winning team will receive £100. 

  • Listen to this podcast episode, where members of the Centre for Personalised Medicine talk about what personalised medicine means to them. 
  • Watch this talk by CPM Research Fellow Dr Susie Weller, discussing public views on personalised care. 
  • Read this page on our website, which explains our working definition of personalised medicine – but this isn’t the only definition and there’s no single right answer: we want to hear about what personalised medicine means to you! 

Click here to download information for teachers about this year’s art competition. 

Click here to download a flyer promoting the competition that would be suitable for school noticeboards, newsletters, etc. 

Take a look at the amazing winners and finalists from previous years: 

Download entry form here