CYPRESS, Calif., Jan. 5, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Vans invites
high school art students around the country to join in the sixth
annual Vans Custom Culture art competition. In partnership with
Americans for the Arts, Journeys and
truth®, Vans Custom Culture celebrates
student creativity and supports arts education with an art and
design competition driven by students across the nation. Starting
today, high school art teachers can register their classes to go up
against thousands of other students, creating their most artistic
and inventive designs using blank Vans shoes as their canvas. Vans
will donate $50,000 to the winning
school's arts program, along with the potential that the school
will see one of its designs produced for sale at select Vans retail
locations and Vans.com.
The Vans Custom Culture competition is intended to inspire high
school students to embrace creativity through art and design and to
raise awareness for the country's suffering arts programs. Vans
Custom Culture has grown since its inception in 2010 with just 326
schools participating in the first year, now the program is
expected to have 3,000 schools participate in 2015. In five years,
Vans Custom Culture has empowered hundreds of thousands of U.S. art
students and has donated over $400,000 to high school art programs across the
country.
"Vans believes in expressing creativity and building a life
around pursuing your dreams; we are actively striving to make sure
students receive the opportunity to show the world who they are
through the arts," said Sarah
Crockett, vice president of global consumer marketing, Vans.
"Vans Custom Culture was designed to give students a platform to
embrace the arts as an outlet for creative expression while giving
back to communities through a meaningful donation going towards
sustaining and growing art programs in order to inspire today's
youth to create."
Starting today and running through February 13 at noon
PT, high school art teachers can register their students for
the 2015 competition at the Vans Custom Culture website. Students
will be provided with four pairs of blank Vans shoes, with each
shoe representing the four themes of the Vans' "Off the Wall"
lifestyle: action sports, arts, music and local flavor.
Vans employees will assist in selecting the top 50 schools to be
featured as semi-finalists. Those 50 schools will then be posted
online for a public vote on the Vans Custom Culture website from
April 24-May 11, determining the top
five schools. The top five finalists will get the opportunity to
travel to New York City to
showcase their designs at an event to a panel of celebrity judges,
with the overall winner earning $50,000 for their school's arts program. In
addition, Vans will donate $4,000
each to the four runner-up schools, plus an extra $50,000 to non-profit partner Americans for the
Arts. Americans for the Arts is the nation's leading organization
for advancing the arts and art education, and Vans' is proud to
support the organization as they continue to elevate arts education
in the U.S.
National retailer Journeys and truth®, one of the
nation's largest youth smoking prevention campaigns, have partnered
with Vans again for this year's competition to offer additional
award opportunities. Journeys will provide a $15,000 'Local Attitude' award to the school that
creates the most compelling 'local flavor' design. The top 50
semi-finalists will also have the opportunity to compete for
$10,000 by customizing a skateboard
deck inspired by truth's "Finish IT" campaign.
New for this year, the Laguna College of
Art and Design has committed to offering $125,000 in total scholarship awards for one
student from each of the top five schools. Each scholarship
recipient will receive a total of $6,250 per year for four years.
For information and registration guidelines visit Vans Custom
Culture at vans.com/customculture and watch this Vans Custom
Culture 2015 teaser on YouTube.
About Vans
Vans®, a VF Corporation (NYSE: VFC) brand, is
the original action sports footwear, apparel and accessories brand.
Vans authentic collections are sold globally in more than
170 countries through a network of subsidiaries, distributors and
international offices. Vans also owns and operates more than 450
retail locations around the world. The Vans brand promotes
the action sports lifestyle, youth culture and creative
self-expression through the support of athletes, musicians and
artists and through progressive events such as the Vans Triple
Crown of Surfing®, the Vans Downtown
Showdown, the Vans Pool Party, the Vans Warped
Tour® and surfing's most prestigious contest, the
Vans U.S. Open of Surfing.
Vans, "Off the Wall" Since '66
www.vans.com
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twitter.com/vans_66
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SOURCE Vans