Junior Painter 2024: winning artworks celebrate disability inclusion

Finalists in Sightsavers Ireland’s Junior Painter of the Year competition showcased their prizewinning artwork at an awards ceremony in Dublin.

Each year the competition invites primary school children across Ireland to enter a drawing, colouring or painting that promotes equality for people with disabilities and shows their understanding of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The event at Google’s Dublin offices awarded 48 winners out of 300 children who submitted artwork on the theme ‘We are all global citizens’.

This year’s national champion was 10-year-old Elora, from County Kildare, who won an iPad for her painting titled ‘Global Identity: that’s how it’s meant to be’. The artwork illustrates a school building split in half: one side featuring an inclusive school environment in Uganda and the other in Ireland.

Elora said: “I made my painting because I wanted everyone to realise that everyone, no matter where they live or who they are, should have the right to go to school.”

Her creation, which took two days to complete, incorporates braille and impressed the judges with its powerful message and intricate detail.

Sightsavers Ireland’s CEO Ciara Smullen said: “The level of entries the Junior Painter of the Year continues to receive is phenomenal. It is one of our most popular events in the Sightsavers calendar. Engaging young people at primary school level in the Sustainable Development Goals and seeing their perspectives on the world through art is what makes this event so special. Congratulations to all the winners and well done to all 2024 participants.”

See highlights from the ceremony in the gallery below.