Congratulations to the Winners of the 2025 Ocean Awareness Contest, Connections to Nature: Looking Inside, Going Outside!
November 17, 2025Message from Founder and President, Linda Cabot
“Nature is loved by what is best in us.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
RBG or CMY — The Color Was Always Here by Leen Al-Thaiban (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia), Gold Award in Senior Visual Art: Digital
This year’s Contest theme, Connections to Nature: Looking Inside, Going Outside, generated over six thousand creative works from a hundred different countries about how we personally connect to nature. Expressing our relationship with nature through creativity builds a deeper connection to our natural world and strengthens our sense of place and belonging. It is this care, admiration, and connection to nature that often inspires the action needed to protect our environment and, consequently, ourselves.
The Bow Seat crew and team of over 80 judges want to thank all participants for their courage and creativity as they created these personal and compelling poems, art, prose, movies, music, and multimedia pieces.
Synapse Jungle by Io Kim (Hightstown, NJ), Bronze Award in Senior Visual Art: Handcrafted
This year’s Contest featured two exciting new partnerships. The Smithsonian Creativity in Resilience Award, in partnership with the Smithsonian Institution, recognizes exceptional work across all of our creative art categories that exemplify our Contest sub-theme of Resilience. Ellen R. Stofan, Under Secretary for Science and Research at the Smithsonian Institution, said it best: “Each submission shows the power and inspiration of creativity and courage — young artists and changemakers transforming personal stories of resilience into visions for a thriving planet.”
We are also honored to partner with the authors of the United by Nature report with an “Author’s Spotlight” award. Fifteen pieces by U.S.-based students will be featured and paired with themes in the groundbreaking United by Nature report by its writers. The United by Nature report, formerly known as the National Nature Assessment, aims to take stock of U.S. lands, waters, wildlife, and the benefits they provide to our economy, health, climate, environmental justice, and national security.
And while we congratulate the 2025 Contest winners, we also applaud and recognize all the young people who submitted this year and became part of our “contest movement”. Creating and sharing one’s voice, whether you are a “Contest winner” or not, also matters, as arts creation in and of itself is empowering and a life-affirming practice. So keep painting, sculpting, writing, singing, dancing, and filming, as more and more studies suggest these creative activities can help develop transforming life skills.
Hope Rides Upstream by Dayoung Keum (Bellevue, WA), Silver Award in Senior Visual Art: Digital
All of you have already helped create a significant impact: our Bow Seat Contest participants and large community demonstrate a powerful image of youth environmental activism. Artivism is the practice of using art as a form of activism to promote social, environmental, and political change. Cultural activism embraces shared and universal experiences, enabling widespread seeds of change. Being in and contributing to community activism matters, and now more than ever, we need each other.
Thank you,
