Rugby Star Lends Support to New Scholarship Programme

Rugby Star Keven Mealamu Lends Support to New Tertiary Scholarship Programme

Three New Zealand school students have created winning designs for exercise books that will be sold throughout the country to fund a new scholarship programme.

The national Art for Books competition, run by Warehouse Stationery, invited primary, intermediate and secondary school students to design a new cover for Impact 1B5 books with iconic rugby player and children’s illustrator Keven Mealamu judging hundreds of entries.

Thousands of limited edition books bearing the three winning designs will be printed by Warehouse Stationery, and money from the sales of the books will be donated to The Warehouse Stationery Scholarship fund.

The fund is a partnership between The Salvation Army and Warehouse Stationery, to provide scholarships for up to six young New Zealanders who would otherwise not have been able to afford tertiary education.

The winning cover designs in each school category were decided by Mealamu, who illustrated short story collection Superhero Pukeko & 7 Winning Stories.

“There were so many great illustrations and designs, it was actually really hard to pick just one in each category,” says Mealamu. “They were creative, colourful and fun, and showed that there’s lots of artistic talent out there in our schools, which is great to see.”

Meadow Edwards, from Bayview Primary School in Glenfield, North Shore took out the top prize for the primary school level with her carefully drawn, colourful sea turtle artwork.

“Meadow’s design met the brief perfectly to show an under-the-sea scene, and her turtles are really well drawn,” says Mealamu. “I particularly like the way she has shown the light coming through the surface of the water, it’s a really clever effect.”

Year seven Rangeview Intermediate student Anna Neumann, from West Auckland, won the intermediate school category with a clever multi-coloured collage of sea creatures and stationery items.

“This is a busy, colourful and fun design that is a perfect school book cover because it’s the sort of artwork where you always find something new to look at,” says Mealamu. “Anna has done a great job of combining the sea theme with stationery and school, and it’s got a real energy about it.”

Kaylee Maguire, a year 10 student from KingsWay School in Orewa, impressed the judge with her clever green, blue and orange digitally-painted mermaid cover design.

“I really like the creativity shown by Kaylee with her mermaid picture, especially her use of things found under the sea to make up parts of the picture such as seaweed for the hair,” says Mealamu. “It’s modern and sophisticated and I can imagine it looking great on classroom tables and desks.”

Each of the three winning students will receive an iPad and $250 Warehouse Stationery gift card.

Warehouse Stationery CEO Pejman Okhovat says the campaign celebrates the creativity of school students and gives them a chance to display their work on a canvas that will be used by thousands of other pupils around New Zealand.

“It’s always exciting to see the amazing designs and ideas that students come up with,” he says. “There are always so many fantastic options for the judge to choose from, and it’s a real pleasure to then get thousands of books printed and made available exclusively at Warehouse Stationery stores nationwide to showcase the talented winners.”

“We hope the creativity shown on the outside of the exercise books will encourage Kiwi students to get creative inside them as well, and start doodling their potentially winning design for next year.”

Impact 1B5 books are the biggest selling school exercise books in New Zealand retail; they also display the S Mark for quality which shows they comply with all of the required quality standards as set out by the New Zealand Government.

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