Reflection on Art prize

The first thing that got pointed out was our Eligibility age.
Our eligible ages did not include people over 35, which others thought was unfair. Although it is important to be inclusive of any age, this was somewhat of a youth competition where younger people get a platform to express themselves, since they do not have much credibility in the real world.

For the competition, we decided that it was best to only include english speaking/ english written poems. This is because we wanted to make the competition as fair as possible. Different languages have different ways of expressions as well as sound. Translating so that the judges can read it, will mean that the poem looses its meaning or has less impact. 

Getting judges that spoke different languages would not work as well as there will always be a certain extent of bias the judge has towards its language and culture. Further more, The judges will have a hard time deciding which work is best as they will not understand the beauty of the work if they do not have a good understanding of the language and its cultures.  

Additionally, the reason why people competing could only write poems is because although literature is obviously not only poetry, setting one type of literature will standardize the competition, thus making it fairer. Different types of literature has different rules, and ways in which a person can add flare, thus we made the lit competition as ONLY poetry. 

Art is both subjective and objective. There are certain rules/axioms we follow to make a “good” artwork, such as grammar, structures, metaphor etc. Students learn what makes a good literature in school and are always told to work on flow the flows and the things mentioned above, because humans like to work with rules that make sense. It often takes time and explanation for innovative and ‘out of the box’ literature to be recognised. The subjective aspect of art is how people feel when they observe or read the piece. This is because individuals all hold different perspectives as well as experiences that determines what is beautiful. 

Hence we can never be certain about what artwork is the best, and how it can be measured.