By: Ms. Samantha Smith
Sounds of scratching pencils and rustling paper filled the room on May 8th, 2015, as eager young artists
from high schools around Phnom Penh competed to win UC’s Annual High School Art Competition. This
year’s prize was a 3 day trip to Japan and 30,000 JPY. Students were required to submit an original piece of
art work along with a written explanation of their piece and the best submissions were invited to attend the
art competition finals on the 8th. Students wore nervous but determined expressions, as they worked hard to
recreate their original submissions in the 4 hour session.
Students were able to choose between 5 topics; new world order thinking, preservation and protection of
cultural heritage, peace safeguarding and development, humanitarian and charity efforts, and international
cooperation.
The artwork was judged based on the following criteria; content, artistic representation of content, creativity
and style, artistic beauty, and realities of the painting. Upper management spent the evening of the 8th
contemplating all the different pieces of artwork. They discussed the meaning and artistic representation of
each piece before casting their first votes for the top 10. After narrowing the submissions down, management
had heated discussions about the best artistic representation and the meaning being depicted. They took their
time to review each written piece and discussed the meaning and purpose of the artwork in detail before
casting their votes for the top 5.
Once the top 5 pieces had been chosen, H.E. Dr. Kao Kim Hourn, along with the other committee members
chose the winner based on the criteria mentioned above.
The award ceremony was held on May 12th in the UC conference room. Ms. Por Malis, Vice President for
Operations, presided over the ceremony.
