PESHAWAR: The students in a recent online art competition displayed creative talent with colours, markers and pencils and garnered widespread appreciation from art lovers, parents and teachers across the province.

The art competition with no particular theme was aimed at engaging students in a positive and creative activity during the lockdown to unlock their latent talent.

Experts believe that students could be engaged in different kinds of online projects including making short films, participating in e-books, art clubs and developing lingo skills to keep them away from mental stress and motivate them to create colours and images of things and people around them.

The Group Development Pakistan (GDP) recently invited students to participate in a free online art contest to ease stress on children by instilling in them a spirit of doing something positive and creative using their mental faculties.

The artworks of young artists from KP received unbelievable response on social media for featuring natural landscapes, human figures and behavioural expressions while some even created images on corona pandemic and safety measures and others came up with sketches of women, domestic violence and touched upon abstract things.

More than 600 entries were submitted to the art contest from different parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa including a large number from tribal districts. The number of entries even forced the organisers to extend the date of submission by more than week and also age of the participants was increased from eight to 13 and then from 15 to 22 to provide space to every candidate.

Imran Takkar, the provincial head of GDP, told this scribe that the art competition was of one the series of activities for students. He said that earlier, a truck art contest was conducted in Peshawar and schoolchildren had participated in it.

Mr Takkar said that the contest was meant to engage students from different urban and rural backgrounds to unlock their inborn capabilities into shaping of creative images that always fascinated impressionistic minds and gave a spur to their creative talent and helped them to unleash their mental stress.

“The entries from young artists from Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan, Waziristan, Bajaur, Khyber, Charsadda, Nowshera, Karak, Swat and Peshawar compelled us to extend age limit and date of final submission. It was a free contest with artwork of young artists being uploaded on GDP website as token of recognition. The response was wonderful,” he said.

Shazma Mehran, a schoolteacher in Peshawar, said that her two children participated in the competition and found it a wonderful experience because to them it was a novel way to participate in an online activity as their art pieces were viewed by their cousins in England. “I think students must be engaged in such healthy activities,” she added.

Published in Dawn, April 13th, 2020