In this statewide arts program, Arkansas high school students are eligible to be registered by their teachers for the opportunity to be rewarded for their original creative works.
Arts Across Arkansas encourages, enhances, and expands student’s original thoughts, processes, personal experiences, and artistic abilities. The goal of Arts Across Arkansas is to give high school students the opportunity to be rewarded for their original creative works.
With the Arts Across Arkansas program, teachers can nominate their students to enter a preliminary work for submission. Multiple students from one school may submit for the preliminary round in their selected medium of music composition, dance choreography, literary arts, visual arts, photography, and film. Students can submit to multiple mediums.
Teaching artists from the Arkansas Arts Council’s Arts in Education Roster (AIE) will then judge the applicants in their respective fields, narrowing the selection of applicants to 5-10 as finalists per medium. After the selection is made, an AIE artist will spend time virtually, or in person with each finalist, mentoring and guiding the student as they go through their creative process with the work they originally submitted. Students may change, edit, or redo their work before submitting the final product for the state finals.
This mentoring process will encourage students to discover the hurdles of creative, original work while enhancing their problem-solving abilities, all while remaining in their own creative space.
The program culminates in a state finals event to be held in the spring of 2025. Cash prizes are awarded during the event. Students must be present at the finals event to qualify for cash prizes.
Nominations are open for 2024-2025 now through Dec. 20. Nominators will be contacted after the nominations close with instructions on how to submit students’ works. For more information or to sign up, visit ArkansasArtsCouncil Arts Across Arkansas. If a student placed first last year, they are not eligible to participate this year.
