The winners of the Europa Postage Stamp Design Competition 2010 were announced during an award ceremony on 4 May at MaltaPost’s head office in Marsa by Dolores Cristina, Minister of Education, Employment and the Family.
“All students who participated in this competition demonstrated great ability in art; the future is in the hands of these students,” said Joseph Said, chairman of MaltaPost p.l.c. Mr Said announced that MaltaPost plans to hold other similar stamp design competitions for children.
The winners of the competition were Nicole Sciberras, of the Malta School of Art, and Brenda Camenzuli, of St Ignatius College, Girls Junior Lyceum, Blata l-Bajda.
All participants and winners were presented with certificates and philatelic prizes by Mrs Christina, who encouraged children to participate in similar events. Art offers another career path and it is very important that we help students to bring out their artistic talents and develop them to the full, the minister said.
The ministry is very aware of the artistic potential of the students and the subject is given the necessary importance in the National Curriculum Framework which will be launched for public consultation later this month, she added.
Minister Cristina announced that this year, a total of 46 applications were received for this year’s call of the Malta Arts Scholarships, which is an improvement on last year, the first year these scholarships were offered.
The winners were presented with The Malta Stamp Collection 1964-2004. All participants and schools received a certificate of participation and a philatelic gift. The winning designs is featured in the next stamp issue, Europa 2011 – Forests, which was issued on 9 May, 2011. The stamps carry a face value of €0.37 and €1.19 and depict the artists’ personal interpretation of “Forests” in the context of the Maltese islands. The €0.37 stamp was designed by Nicole Sciberras and the €1.19 stamp by Brenda Camenzuli.
The €0.37 stamp designed by Ms Sciberras will participate in the Best EUROPA Stamp Contest among EUROPA stamps issued by the 49 postal administration members of the PostEurop. This contest is an annual online event where creative entries from across Europe compete for the best stamp design. The best EUROPA stamp will be voted by web viewers. Voting is open till 7 August. The winning stamp will be announced at the PostEurop Plenary Assembly to be held between 12-13 October in Turkey. Maltese web viewers are invited to vote for the Maltese stamp on www.posteurop.org/europacompetition.