In my opinion, the Baldwin Prize’s biggest prize is insight and development. Each year, the prompt asks students to investigate some element of their intellectual and emotional life and reflect on what this personal truth says about the way we should all treat each other. The results of that process are often inspirational.
So writing, rewriting, talking about the prompt, and sharing an essay with others can be immensely rewarding. But this is also a competition, and only two of the many entrants will win a trophy and education grant.
To give students a better sense of what their collective efforts looked like and something to commemorate what each of them accomplished, I commissioned a poster that incorporates one line from every essay that was entered this year. (One hundred and eight essays are represented here. One late entry was not submitted in time to be included.) That's the poster you see above.
Our theme was empowerment, so a lot of students drew from challenging moments in their lives. There are epiphanies (“But I wanted to be happy too. I wanted to be me.”), confessions (“To watch people and their fear of me: It was like a drug of some sort …") and triumphs (“I finished my performances, and all I heard was applause.”).
Brilliant team members at the firm Bivee designed the poster. Alexandre Siqueira illustrated it, inspired by two photographs of James Baldwin by Allan Warren made available under a Creative Commons license.
I cannot thank Bivee and Alexandre enough for everything they put into this. You are welcome to print your own copy of the poster. Send me a message using the contact form, and I’ll respond with a link to a high-resolution file.
So writing, rewriting, talking about the prompt, and sharing an essay with others can be immensely rewarding. But this is also a competition, and only two of the many entrants will win a trophy and education grant.
To give students a better sense of what their collective efforts looked like and something to commemorate what each of them accomplished, I commissioned a poster that incorporates one line from every essay that was entered this year. (One hundred and eight essays are represented here. One late entry was not submitted in time to be included.) That's the poster you see above.
Our theme was empowerment, so a lot of students drew from challenging moments in their lives. There are epiphanies (“But I wanted to be happy too. I wanted to be me.”), confessions (“To watch people and their fear of me: It was like a drug of some sort …") and triumphs (“I finished my performances, and all I heard was applause.”).
Brilliant team members at the firm Bivee designed the poster. Alexandre Siqueira illustrated it, inspired by two photographs of James Baldwin by Allan Warren made available under a Creative Commons license.
I cannot thank Bivee and Alexandre enough for everything they put into this. You are welcome to print your own copy of the poster. Send me a message using the contact form, and I’ll respond with a link to a high-resolution file.
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