JEDDAH, 11 January 2008 — The winners of a national competition held by the British Council will receive their prizes in Jeddah tomorrow. Abir Alami, the project manager for women and science at the council, said that the winners of the three categories — best photograph, best artwork and best slogan — would each receive a laptop.
The runners up will also receive substantial prizes. Twelve finalists have also been selected for the 2008 British Council’s calendar. A panel that included a professional photographer and an established artist judged the entries.
“The ceremony and the presentations will be hosted by the British Consul General Kate Rudd,” said Alami. “We received some very high quality entries and it was tough to decide on the winners.”
Entrants were asked to create a slogan that raises awareness of the importance or problems of climate change or create a photograph or artwork highlighting the effect of global warming.
“We sent the challenge to schools and colleges through the Saudi Environmental Society and the general public and received some very imaginative results,” said Amani Fairak, the women’s project coordinator.
“The participants were spread over a wide range of ages, between nine and 40 years. We hope to have the winning entries on display at the awards ceremony.”
The competition is being held in conjunction with a touring exhibition of photographs taken by internationally acclaimed photographers. The exhibition has toured more than 70 countries already.
Twelve of the photographs selected for the exhibition were taken in the Middle East region. In the Gulf, the exhibition has been mounted in Oman, the UAE, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
The photographers were commissioned to highlight some of the downstream effects of climate change. Subjects, including human rights, nutrition and pollution, are addressed in relation to climate change.
Fairak said some of the exhibits showed what technological steps some countries — for example Japan — had taken to ameliorate the effects of global warming.
Alami said the project was part of the unfolding plan to raise the profile of the concerns of climate change in the Kingdom.
The British Council has plans to hold workshops and educational activities throughout Saudi Arabia in the near future, including a discussion on how to create a carbon-free city.
Michael Gordon, director of the British Council in Jeddah, said the competition was only part of the continuously expanding range of projects the council was organizing.
