So You Want to Be an Artist is a contest about art and you. Make an artwork about something you care about and post it here. Then it’s up to your friends, family and other people to vote on the entries. The 12 artworks with the most votes will be displayed at the National Gallery of Canada, where our uber-cool judges will pick the best ones. This is your chance to get your art out into the world. It doesn’t matter if you’re thinking about art school or have never picked up a paintbrush in your life – show us what you’ve got.

Starting at 12:00 a.m. Eastern Time (ET) on January 10, 2011, and continuing until 11:59 p.m. on February 28, 2011 (the “Submission Phase”), contestants can visit the Contest website at www.makeart.gallery.ca to enter and submit a digital image of an original artwork in any media (an “Artwork”). No entries will be accepted after 11:59 p.m. ET February 28, 2011.

For a contest like this, we obviously have to have a few rules. If you are under the age of majority in your province or territory, read through these rules with your parent or legal guardian.

Basically you have to be between 16 and 19 years of age (as of May 31, 2011). Your artwork has to be original – you can’t cut and paste other people’s images or logos and call them your own – and it can be no larger than 30 x 40 cm and 2-dimensional so we can hang it on our wall. The themes and images should be appropriate (no extreme violence, obscene imagery, hateful or racially objectionable themes) and can be made in any medium. The Gallery will decline works that don’t comply with these rules. The voting period will open on March 1, 2011 and close on March 31, 2011. People will be able to vote for as many artworks as they want, but they can only vote once per artwork – which means you’ll want to get as many people as possible to vote for yours! The 12 artworks with the most votes will be the finalists. If you’re one of the finalists, you’ll have to sign a waiver and the Gallery will pay for you to send your artwork to be put on display and be seen by our uber-cool judges. The judges will decide who gets 1st, 2nd and 3rd prize at the end of May 2011. We’ll be announcing the winners early in June 2011.

For more information, visit: http://makeart.gallery.ca/index.php/about

“I knew we were doing something right when one of the girls who was being released before the program finished, requested to stay an extra day,” explained Mark Vonesch of Vancouver’s Reel Youth organization.

Vonesch directed a four-day literacy program, partnering Reel Youth with young women and men from the Burnaby Youth Custody Centre. The idea was to create music videos about life behind bars. The videos have just been released online. The youth who participated in the project used masks, animation, shadows and silhouettes to protect their identities.

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The Arts Door youth leadership team, made up of 14 newcomer youths, will share its preliminary research on how accessible opportunities are for immigrant and newcomer youth in the Tri-Cities arts and culture area.

Their research is based on survey responses from 28 businesses and organizations in the industry. The youth leadership team will present their results as well as a cultural competency report card for the Tri-Cities.

It opened on Sept. 17, and Parkside director Joanne Young says it met with instant success.

She was one of the main supporters of the idea to make student art visible to the public. What she hadn’t anticipated was the immediate embrace it got from local schools.

With participating schools each allotted one month to display their works, the student gallery is already booked for the year.

“I didn’t know that teachers would be so gung-ho about it. They’re just thrilled and it’s really inspired them to do something special to put on the wall.”

“I’m a pretty fun-loving person and I have a good sense of humour, so I’m looking forward to joking around and making art with kids,” said Kirkland, who recently founded an arts studio dedicated to kids.

With a fresh coat of paint on the walls and cubbies stocked full of gleaming new supplies, Kirkland put the final polish this week on a 4Cats Arts Studio in Royal Oak.

Matching sets of everything — trays, brushes, paints and canvases — were still pristine just before her official opening. Soon, the 32-year-old Saskatchewan native will load syringes with paint and lead classes in creating a massive splatter painting.

Turns out there may be a flip side to the recent cuts to school-based arts programs. People in the community are filling the gap by getting creative in a whole new way.

Take Collage Collage at 621 Kingsway, for instance. Longtime arts teacher and Emily Carr grad Erin Boniferro spent years facilitating family art activities at museums and galleries around Vancouver, and eventually opened her own art retail outlet with a twist last September. Business has soared, thanks to her innovative approach to running her store.

The three graphic artists won The Vancouver Sun-Gang Task Force Teens Against Gangs poster contest earlier this year. And TransLink joined in to help get the message out about the dangers of gang life.

“Gang life impacts teens, families and communities,” TransLink vice-president Doug Kelsey said. “Our Transit Police and SkyTrain team work closely with other enforcement agencies every day to keep our transit system and communities safe — and we are committed to being part of this conversation as a strong enforcement partner and a responsible corporate citizen.”

Ever since the “Graffiti Fest” just over a month ago, there have been complaints from residents and business owners about the building’s new look.

But Mayor Dave Pernarowski says those who’ve complained about the artwork seem to be missing the point.

As festival board chair Paul Dumontet said in a recent email to supporters, “Over the past 12 months, we have developed a new vision for the Children’s Festival that we believe will restore our position as one of the world’s leading events for young people.

“Sadly, over that same period of time, our government funding has been slashed by some $200,000, creating a serious cash flow problem that threatens our ability to implement our new vision. We need an influx of cash and we need it now.”

The Canada Council for the Arts and the National Youth Orchestra of Canada announced the Michael Measures Prize Tuesday in Toronto.

The prize is being established with a $1 million bequest from Michael Measures, an Ottawa classical music lover who died in 2008.

The first award is to be given in summer 2011 and will go to a musician aged 16-22 who has completed the summer training program with the NYOC.

The Canadian Parks and Recreation Benefits Catalogue states that we learn physical motor skills and social skills through play and that we learn creativity and develop intellectual capacities and concepts through play, arts and cultural activities.

Comox Valley KidsFest aims to provide plenty of play opportunities as it embarks on its 19th annual event. KidsFest is coming up this Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Lewis Centre and in Lewis Park, and almost every imaginable type of entertainment will be available to stimulate children’s imagination.

Kajda-Minett, who just opened the doors to a new franchise of 4Cats Arts Studio for Kids in South Surrey last week, was hit by the art bug early in her life.

“My godfather was Witold Palka, a Polish artist who was well-known and respected for his work with oils. Growing up, I was exposed to his art and we had his paintings in our home,” she said.

As a result, Kajda-Minett had an appreciation for art an early age, and was immersed in art classes growing up.

Flash forward several years and he was making home videos on the family video camera. Then the Wellington Secondary School graduate took a video production class in Grade 9 and his interest in film soared to new heights.

Brugge has made more than a dozen films so far – the longest of which is 56 minutes – and he’s already winning money and accolades for his work.

Meatspace, a five-minute film about a guy who feels more comfortable in cyberspace as opposed to “meatspace” (the real world), won best drama at the Powell River Film Festival in February and top senior film and best drama at the B.C. Student Film Festival in May.

Auditions are now being held for all voices, ages six to 70, for places in the Junior and Intermediate Training Choirs, Senior Children’s Choir, Chamber Choir, 2008 CBC Choral Competition Prize-winning Youth Choir and the Adult Community Chorus.

All the choirs learn and perform a wide variety of musical genres in several languages, under the expert direction of acclaimed founder Steven Horning.

The idea behind the image, Quaite says, “is that you’re always surrounded, looked over and watched – taken care of in a way.”

Quaite is the team leader of a group of six youth spending their summer painting mural to be mounted along the Ogden Point breakwater.

Using a projector, they transfer the original work of art onto large panels.

This is phase two of a multi-year project whose aim is to eventually run along the entire 1.1-kilometre span – likely the largest in the world.

Last year’s mural displays a unique Coast Salish designs from the land and sea on each panel, each with its own story