Art Competition 2024-25

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 third year of the competition, we’re looking at how personalised medicine affects our planet. Personalised medicine hopes to improve how we diagnose, treat and prevent diseases, helping people stay healthy.

In 2019, the NHS accounted for around 4-5% of the UK’s total carbon footprint. The NHS is working to improve this, and already carbon dioxide emissions per patient have fallen by almost two-thirds since 1990.

How might personalised medicine affect our carbon footprint?

Personalised medicine impacts on the environment in lots of ways, some positive, some negative, and sometimes a bit of both…

We would like you to create art about how personalised medicine affects our planet. 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! Extra credit will be given to entries that reuse materials that might otherwise be wasted. 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.
  • Extra credit will be given to artworks that reuse materials that might otherwise be wasted.
  • 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: 2nd September 2024

Closes to new entries: 31st January 2025 at 1pm

Winner and finalists announced: 21st March 2025

  • You can enter the competition if you are 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 2024.
  • 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 31st January 2025 at 1pm. Late entries will not be accepted.

Please email a photo of the artwork to cpm@well.ox.ac.uk with subject line ‘CPM competition’ by 31st January 2025 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 the environmental impact of personalised medicine?
  • Originality – does the image make you think about how personalised medicine affects our planet in new or challenging ways?
  • Artistry – does the image capture your attention and make you want to find out more?
  • Sustainability – does the image reuse materials 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 John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford, St Anne’s College, the Centre for Human Genetics, and are featured on our website, social media, and in our annual reports.

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 and one runner-up will receive £50.

  • Check out this podcast episode, where Dr Gabrielle Samuel from King’s College London discusses the environmental impact of personalised medicine.
  • Take a look at this blog post from the Health Foundation about ‘One day in 2036 – imagining the net zero NHS of the future’
  • Read this blog post from Carbon Brief which looks at the carbon footprint of the NHS

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

Download entry form here