Soil Painting Competition 2025
Celebrate World Soil Day: Connecting Community, Art & Earth
Theme: To Be Announced
EXPRESS YOUR CREATIVITY WITH EARTH
In conjunction with World Soil Day 2025, Living Soil Asia and our partners are excited to share that we will be hosting the first soil painting competition in Singapore!
Living Soil Asia invites you to explore, connect and create with the land through soil painting.
Selected works will be exhibited as part of a soil festival in December 2025.
Examples of soil paintings:
Image Credits:
1. The Art of Soil, Rebecca Schultz via Grid Magazine
2. Original Artwork by David Sheil Studio
GET STARTED HERE: JOIN, LEARN, REGISTER
Select a title of your choice to navigate to your desired section:
The Ground Beneath Our Feet
Soil is alive and rich with stories waiting to be uncovered in our neighbourhoods.
Join us and explore why we’re celebrating through art!
Follow These Steps
Ready to create your soil painting?
Submit your artwork and process through our official form. Check out the guidelines below!
Key Dates to Remember
Stay on track with key competition dates—from launch to exhibition day.
WHY ARE WE FOCUSING ON SOIL?
Soil is the foundation of life, and has direct impacts on our health. Having healthy soil helps to mitigate flood issues, urban heat island effect, tree failures, and create better ecosystems for wildlife, flora and human communities.
In urban spaces like Singapore, where soil and land are constantly shifting and changing in its use, it is of critical importance that we learn to care for the soil that still exists around us, be it in our forests or neighbourhoods.
Through the creative lens of art, we hope to illuminate the importance of soil, inspire imagination, and foster a richer connection to the earth beneath our feet, right here on our home ground of Singapore.
WHY JOIN THIS COMPETITION?
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An interdisciplinary & interconnected experience:
Blending art, science, environmental, and cultural awareness in a unique, hands-on journey.
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Rediscover neighbourhoods:
A chance to reconnect with our surroundings and community with curiosity for our everyday places.
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Encourage creativity and mindfulness:
Slow down and immerse yourself in the amazing world beneath our feet. Tap into your creative self and create a piece of art.
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Exhibition opportunity:
Selected works will be displayed in an exhibition as part of a soil festival in December 2025.
ENTER THE COMPETITION
Select Your Category:
Whether you’re a student, community member, new to art or an art-lover, we invite all to participate in the soil painting competition and bring your unique vision to life.
This is your chance to get your hands in the soil and express your creativity!
Keep scrolling…
Hey educators, we’ve designed a special opportunity just for you!
Discover how you and your institution can engage your colleagues and students in this interdisciplinary competition and explore the opportunity to integrate it into your curriculum and schedule.
Click here to learn more.
HOW TO PARTICIPATE:
Follow this 9-step process:
Go out and explore your school and neighbourhood and discover the soil around you.
For making the soil painting, we invite you to check out a community garden, your school, or have a chat with your neighbour who has many plants, and ask if you can collect a spoonful of soil to make some soil pigment, look at the soil in your pots, or just your own garden and backyard!
Collect a spoonful of soil samples respectfully. Remember to document the collection process through videos or photos.
Create paint using the soil you collected. There are many ways to go about doing so—it can be as simple as mixing soil and water, or check out this video for making soil pigments. Whichever method you choose, be sure to document the process in a video!
Ideate and paint according to the theme (to be announced). Document the process in a video.
Using your photos and videos, compile a simple video showing us that you personally collected the soil and created the painting. This can also be an opportunity for you to share about the painting’s meaning.
Write an Artist Statement of up to 200 words, sharing your process of creation (including observations of where and how you collected the soil), inspirations, ideas etc.
Take a photo of your artwork and submit it with your video and artist statement through a Google form by September 15th.
Participants who are longlisted will be invited to submit their physical artwork to us for a second stage of judging, which will take place in October.
Shortlisted and selected submissions will be announced by 3rd November and their paintings will be exhibited at the World Soil Day Celebration and Award Ceremony on 6th December 2025.
FAQ & Supportive Resources:
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Get all the details you need, including guidelines, judging criteria, and key dates in a handy PDF:
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Only soil, soil pigments and charcoal can be used for the paintings. Watercolor, acrylic, pencils and markers etc. are not permitted.
Paintings can be of any size.
The work needs to be original.
Paintings will be judged based on creativity, originality, and craft.
Participants will have to submit their painting, a video, and an artist statement through a Google Form.
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Your video should include context of who, where and how the soil is collected from as well as the painting process. Please keep the video to a maximum of 2 minutes.
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There are 3 categories for this soil painting competition:
Primary school
Secondary school
Open category
Participants may apply for the category which best represents them.
All submissions will be assessed under the same criteria within each category.
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Learn how to mindfully collect soil with our Gathering Soil With Intention and Respect guiding questions here.
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Watch along and learn how to paint with soil: Painting With Soil
Image Credits: Earth Pigments Via Nisa
A Note on Gathering Soil with Intention and Respect
Drawing from the Honorable Harvest, which are a set of principles put forth by Indigenous communities that guide us in interacting with the land, we invite you to be intentional and mindful when you are out exploring your neighbourhoods and collecting soil samples for your soil paintings:
How much soil do I need? A small spoonful is enough for making soil pigments; use what you have collected wisely!
Have I been mindful and respectful in the way I have collected these samples? Be gentle when removing soil, look out for small critters (eg. earthworms) and plants, and try not to harm them and the ecosystem.
Do take a moment to express gratitude for what you have collected and to those who have made this possible.
FOR EDUCATORS
As educators, there are three ways that you can engage in this competition:
Image Credits: Soil Artwork by Kirsten Kurtz via Art & Wine Magazine
Share the competition details with your students and colleagues, and encourage them to participate.
Image Credits: Soil Artwork by Kirsten Kurtz via Art & Wine Magazine
Use this as a class activity and get students to go out and paint together! This soil painting competition is multi-disciplinary and can easily fit into science, art, social studies and geography lessons. Students will have to submit individually through a Google form.
Engage Living Soil Asia and our partner Wild Dot to facilitate a soil painting workshop for your school. Please reach out to us for further details and discussion.
Educator Briefing Dates
Both briefing sessions for educators will be held online where you can get to know us, learn the details of the competition and address any questions you may have. There are two sessions to choose from.
Session 1: 27 Feb 2025, 3:00pm - 3:45pm
Session 2: 13 Mar 2025, 3:00pm - 3:45pm
COMPETITION TIMELINE
Key Dates to Remember
27 February or 13 March
TEACHER’S ONLINE BRIEFING
3 April
COMPETITION LAUNCH & ANNOUNCEMENT OF THEME
15 June - 15 September
PAINTING SUBMISSION PERIOD
3 November
ANNOUNCEMENT OF SHORTLISTED PAINTINGS
6 December
EXHIBITION, WORLD SOIL DAY CELEBRATION & AWARD CEREMONY
