Peace Without Limits

For more than thirty years, the Lions Club has promoted an international peace poster contest. Each year there is a new theme, and the contest is open to students from ages eleven to thirteen. Prizes are awarded at the international level and also at the local level. Given the constraints of my teaching schedule, I typically do not have students compete in art contests, but I decided to give this one a try, and I’m so glad I did. Not only did my students enjoy the project, but I also loved seeing them make connections between the environment, artificial intelligence, and watercolor painting. The theme of last year’s contest was Peace Without Limits.

Brainstorming Peace
I introduced the project by having a whole-class brainstorming session about the theme. I asked questions such as “What does peace look like? What are symbols for peace? What animals represent peace? Are there certain colors we associate with the word peace?” We generated a list filled with peaceful places, animals, and other imagery.

Integrating Technology
As new technology continues to be introduced, I want my students to learn safe and practical ways to use it. One such way is for students to create their own prompts based on our whole-class discussion.

Each student wrote an idea in a text-to-image prompt box, using either Adobe Express or Canva’s Magic Media. We discussed what they liked about the image created by these AI tools and what they wanted to change. Using AI in this way helped students generate ideas and saved them time, especially if the resulting image didn’t fit their original concept.

I provided feedback to students based on these images before they started their drafts. One student’s prompt was Rainbows, resulting in peaceful rivers, trees, and white doves. Based on our one-on-one discussion, she decided to make a few compositional changes in her rough draft.

Gridded Rough Drafts
Due to the size requirements for the poster, and because I wanted to make sure students were successful in drawing on a large scale, I had them create a grid to isolate sections. Grid drawing isn’t something I typically teach students, but this contest was a big deal, and I hoped it would eliminate student frustration with the challenge of drawing so much larger than their rough drafts.

Full-Size Final Posters
Once rough drafts were completed, I showed the whole class how to create a larger grid on the final paper. This step required using 36" (91 cm) metal rulers because the final paper was quite large. The benefit of having a grid drawn was that redrawing their plan was like putting together puzzle pieces.

Once everything was drawn, students erased the grid and began painting. This project took a long time from start to finish (six class periods), but the results were amazing.

Celebrating Student Success
After both sixth-grade classes finished painting their posters, I asked my principal to help judge the top five pieces. I submitted these to our local Lions Club, and they invited us to their meeting to honor and celebrate the first-place winner. All five students received monetary awards from the Lions Club, and the first-place poster was submitted to the regional Lions Club for another round of voting. Even though my students didnʼt win the state contest, I am so proud of their work, and I know they are too.

Participating in contests can be difficult to work into curriculum plans; however, I found this to be an excellent way to connect visual art, critical thinking, technology, and the environment.

The theme for the new year has already been published, and if you are interested in finding out more, there is information on how to sign up on the Lions Club’s website (see Resource).