STAFF and pupils at Malmesbury Park Primary School are celebrating after winning a prestigious art prize.

The school won the 2021 Dorset Art Prize for primary schools for their art installation based around their ‘Our Perfect Planet’ themed artwork.

The theme for the competition was the word ‘narrative’, with schools challenged to come up with creative submissions to highlight their depth of artistic talent.

This was the first year that primary schools were able to compete in the competition.

The Dorset Art Prize was established by Bournemouth and South College in 2014 with the support of Dorset Community Foundation.

The key objective of the Prize is to engage with all aspects of the community through encouraging and helping to create a broader, more inclusive vision for art locally.

Children across Years 3 and 6 created the artwork at Malmesbury Park Primary Academy and was part of a wider project they were working on inspired by Sir David Attenborough’s Perfect Planet.

Before starting their artwork, the children reflected on how the preservation of the planet is the only way to ensure humanity’s story can continue. This theme was included across all aspects of the art, including the fact that the resources used to create the artwork were themselves recycled, repurposed and reused.

Jackie Green, principal at Malmesbury Park Primary School, said: “We are very proud and excited to have won the inaugural Primary School Art Prize and would like to thank everyone who supports us in keeping arts at the centre of our school.

“We have already decided what we are spending our prize money on – a new video camera, which the children and staff can use to record our amazing artwork and create films and performances to share with the wider community.

“Special thanks must go to our art lead, Miss McPherson, and her arts team, who were the curators of our submission and who work tirelessly to give our children as many opportunities as they can find to develop their creativity through the arts.”