£350 up for grabs: Calling all budding artists and graphic designers in the making....

Stop the Press:

The School of American Studies is organising a public exhibition about slavery, race, and the American South to coincide with Black History Month 2012 (Monday 1^st – Sunday 14^th October).

The exhibition to be hosted at the Millennium Library, Norwich, includes letters written by Sarah Hicks Williams, an antebellum woman born and raised in New York State as part of the genteel middle class, who, in 1853 married Benjamin Williams, a slaveholder from Greene County, North Carolina. The letters chart her experience as a slaveholding mistress through the Civil War and into Reconstruction. The eleven letters included in the exhibition highlight the stark differences between Sarah’s family’s home in New Hartford (and the antebellum North in general) and Greene County, (where the Williams' plantation was located), North Carolina and the South. The letters mark Sarah’s transition as she became more attuned to Southern life, slaveholding, and her status as plantation mistress. They also include letters written during and after the Civil War when the enslaved owned by the Williams’ family are emancipated and Sarah faces African Americans as their employer rather than mistress.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of public lectures by members of faculty and research students, hosted by Fusion at the Forum, in addition to a number of public cafes discussing the ways in which Black history and lives are represented in American society.

Creativity Needed:

What we need now is some eye-grabbing artwork to promote the exhibition and related events. Framing the event around the catchy title “Containing Multitudes” and thinking thorough the events we have planned, AMS is running a competition beginning mid-April (i.e. now) through mid-June (closing date: Friday 15^th June) to provide AMS students with the opportunity to promote your talents (and of course the event itself!) through your artwork.

What Do I Need to Do to Enter?:

Submit a copy of your artwork via email attachment by the closing date of 15^th June. Entrants will be judged by myself, as organiser of the exhibition, Nick Selby, as head of school, and another member of the AMS faculty (yet to be chosen). Winners will be notified by the end of June 2012.

Saving the Important Bit until Last:

The winning design will be used on all promotional material for the event and the successful entrant will win prize money of £200. There will also be additional prize of £100 for the entrant who is judged runner-up, and £50 for third place. The award ceremony (including all three designs) will take place during the exhibition in October.

If you have any further questions in relation to the competition or the events themselves please contact me at becky.fraser@uea.ac.uk or else pop by my office (Arts Building, 1.37).