Creative writing competitions
On 31st March 2017, students and mentors from different schools in Slovenia as well as those from Italy, Hungary, and Sweden, came to Gimnazija Vič for the award ceremonies for two creative writing competitions which were organised by our English department during this school year.
The first was the micro-story competition. For this, writers had to pen a short story of 100 words or fewer based on a list of themes agreed upon at the start of the year. This year, to connect it to our other competition, the themes were all based on images taken from the work of Matsuo Basho. The judges narrowed all the entries down to a shortlist which were all published in a special booklet which was handed out on the day. From that shortlist, a series of winners were chosen for both primary and secondary levels. In addition, schools had the chance to use the writing programme as a stimulus for other creative projects with students creating other work connected to art, music, and dance.
The judges were very impressed by the standard of work and how well the young writers coped with putting together their stories.
The same appreciation was shown by the judges for our second competition which was the International Haiku Competition. We were happy to have this contest back in Ljubljana after being looked after so well over the past few years by the schools in Stockholm and Budapest. It is great to see this competition evolve with every year and 2017 saw the return of a school from Italy and the first appearance by a school from Belgium.
The shortlisted pieces for the haiku competition were published in a special book which was available to the writers and mentors connected to the project. As well as the best pieces of haiku poetry, the book displayed some fantastic pieces of art representing different scenes in Ljubljana which were painted by our students.
With so many of our guests on the day travelling from other countries, we decided to start the main event with a presentation about Slovenia. Our A to Z guide covered history, literature, music, dancing, food, and much more besides, so our visitors got the chance to learn more about the nation they were visiting and had the opportunity to appreciate some of its cultural offerings.
After this, we heard a short speech from Ms Molnár-Gábor from the Hungarian cultural centre, the Balassi Institute, who spoke of how impressed she was by the students’ talent and how important international cooperation is for creative projects.
It was then time for the awards to be given out for both competitions. The selected pieces were performed by our students and the winning writers received their commendations and prizes from our principal who went on to bring the event to a close by thanking everyone involved and expressing her hopes that such creativity would continue through a range of future programmes.
We would like to thank everyone who took part in the competitions and we were already looking forward to putting together ideas for 2018.
The project mentors, Blanka Klobučar and Tim Gallagher, would like to thank the students and mentors from:
- Osnovna šola Bičevje
- Osnovna šola Dobrova
- Osnovna šola Kolezija
- Åva Gymnasium, Stockholm
- Don Bosco Hechtel, Hechtel
- Közgazdasági Politechnikum, Budapest
- Licej Franceta Prešerna, Trieste
And to all those from Gimnazija Vič who took part in the projects and in the presentations on the day.