Kids' car paintings that could save the world

When I was a kid, I’d often pick up a pencil and try to draw the car that my old man drove. As I loosely connected curved lines, the finished product would always end up vaguely resembling a VW Beetle.

Inspired exterior styling, state-of-the-art technology and a special focus on the environment did not mean much to me or my school buddies back in the late 1960s.

Kids today, however, appear to have very different ideas about car design and the potential ways they could benefit us all in the future. That’s something I found out as a judge for the eighth Toyota Dream Car Art Contest, which culminated in Tokyo yesterday in a high profile prize-giving ceremony.

Now in its eighth year, this art contest is becoming a major force in the world of children’s art. To symbolise the importance of the contest to Toyota, the head judge is none other than company CEO Akio Toyoda himself.

 The eight other judges include three art university professors, a sculptor, one creative director, one art director, Super GT (Toyota) racing driver Juichi Wakisaka and yours truly.

Each year, Toyota sends out invitations for entries to schools around the world asking for artwork in three age categories: seven years old and under; 8-11 years old and 12-15 years old.

With entry numbers growing each year, the contest this year welcomed over 662,000 entries from 75 countries and regions. That’s up by around 50,000 over last year.  

While artwork from kids in Thailand and Vietnam accounted for more than half of the entries, several nationalities were first-time entrants. That group included children from the Canary Islands, Ireland, Tanzania, Cambodia, Laos and Qatar.

It goes without saying that the judging process is a mammoth job. The two-layered jury panel must whittle down the entries in two distinct stages. Firstly, a “large” panel of judges inside Toyota collects the hundreds of thousands of entries, evaluates them and narrows that number down to 90 finalists.

It is those 90 paintings that we nine judges, including Akio Toyodas must vote on. And out of that process come the 31 award recipients.

On August 27 at Toyota’s Mega Web complex in Tokyo, those 31 prize winners gathered with their parents to accept their awards hosted by Toyota executive vice-president Yasumori Ihara. Of course, Toyota covers all airfares, hotels and other costs involved with inviting the winning children and their parents to Japan for a week’s celebratory tour.

From Toyota’s point of view, they have two main reasons for sponsoring such a global art contest. Firstly, as a responsible corporate citizen (yeah, we know they’ve had to recall thousands of cars but they seem to have weathered that challenge), they want to promote safety, societal and environmental concerns, a fact that many entrants pick up on.

And secondly, they wouldn’t be a car-maker if they weren’t aiming to – well, sell cars – and bridge the gap to the next generation of car buyers by instilling a sense of thrill and potential in kids from around the world. Right?

This year’s cross-section of winners was a true representation of what Toyota’s international art contest is all about.  In the seven and under category, Bui Thanh Mai from Vietnam took the gold award with her “Super Crab Car”, which can recycle straw and rubbish into paper and notebooks.

In the 8-11 category, Yodsing Jirawat from Thailand won the gold award for a painting called “Wat Pho Massage Car”, which can help people relax while treating ailments using various Thai traditional massage postures.

Sixteen-year-old Romanian student Iasmina Raceanu, who was 15 when she entered, captured the gold prize in the 12-15 category with her whimsical painting entitled “Storyota.” Iasmina, whose strong spirituality is infectious for someone so young, believes that each of us has a special story to tell.

She was inspired by the form of a seahorse gathering stories within its body and transforming those inanimate stories into life. Her father Virgil said his daughter loves to paint. “Sometimes she will spend eight or even 10 hours in her room painting. She sometimes even forgets to come down for lunch.”

In addition to the three gold award winners, each category offered two silver prizes, three bronze awards and four ‘Best Finalist’ special mentions. And the winner of the 'President Akio Toyoda Award', which features a specially prepared 3D sculpture of the recipient’s painting, was five-year-old Pha Mealaksey from Cambodia for her “Smart Fish Car”.

Asian entries account for the vast majority of artists and winners, but the US managed some 2700 participants this year, with three Americans picking up ‘Best Finalists’ special mentions.

Toyota Australia -- the local distributor responsible for collecting entries Down Under -- withdrew from the competition two years ago for “unknown reasons", say contest organisers, who unsurprisingly want Toyota Australia to rethink its strategy and re-enter the competition.

If you thought Iasmina went to great lengths with her winning painting, then how about kids' artworks depicting cars that fight cancer, save people in natural disasters, unite multi-racial citizens, investigate the microworld, collect used plastic bottles and trash and recycle them into building bricks for housing, transform sad black and white landscapes into colour and even stop violence and spread love?

One painting that really impressed me was by 14-year-old Qatar student Saji Kumar Deepak. Called “Toyota Aqua Car”, it presents a car that works in hot, humid climates to absorb water from the atmosphere and redistribute the “Blue Gold” to turn deserts into lush pastures.

These days, we adults complain about kids spending too much time playing games and wasting time with Facebook and Twitter on smartphones and iPads. But there are kids out there who are really concerned about the world that we are leaving for them and want to express that concern.

Iasmina’s father said it best. “Thank you Toyota for giving these kids a platform to convey their ideas and hopes and dreams and maybe come up with some worthwhile solutions for the future. And of course thanks for helping us to understand Japan a little better too. Keep it up.”