STREET SUMMER: STREET ART COMPETITION

The guys from Don’t Panic Online hit us up last week and asked us to run an article on their street summer street art competition. The dude seemed pretty safe and the competition looked pretty cool so I figured we could roll with it. Basically the competition is being run in conjunction with Channel 4 as part of their celebration of street culture over the summer. Street art and graffiti is being represented by the TV premiere of Exit Through The Gift Shop and a new documentary focussing on the UK scene, as well as this search for new talent.

The basic premise of the competition is that you come up with a basic design on one of the five themes of street culture that the street summer season is featuring (street dance, urban sports, spoken word, hip hop and street art) – you then upload it to the site and everyone votes for them. The top ten from each of the seven different regions in the UK are then judged by Channel 4 and the mentor from each region. The prize is pretty sick as the best piece from each region gets featured on a high profile wall (or billboard) in the area for two weeks and you get a bunch of money and features/postcards/posters/short movies made about you as well. Pretty cool prize!

Competition rules are actually kinda complicated and better explained on the actual site than I could ever summarise here so if you’re interested it’s probably best to head over to the official street summer site and get the details from there if you’re interested. There are seven winners and it seems like a good opportunity so if you’re into street art (or any other kind of art I uess) you might as well go for it.