Students at the painting contest at Centre for Excellence in Jamshedpur on Wednesday. Picture by Bhola Prasad

Jamshedpur, Feb. 3: From melting glaciers to dwindling wildlife population — the students voiced their concern on canvas today.

The occasion was an inter-school painting competition, ninth Colour Splash, on the theme environment organised by the Society for Promotion of Professional Excellence at the Centre for Excellence. Managing director of Tinplate Company of India Ltd Tarun Daga inaugurated the event by releasing balloons in the air and painting a few strokes.

About 250 students from 30 schools took part. There were separate topics for senior and junior groups. While the seniors had to choose from “The Aftermath of Climatic Change: World in 2110” or “Managing our Packaging Waste,” the options for the juniors were “A Day at Jubilee Park” or “A poster banning the use of Plastic”.

The judges were artist Ranadip Mukherjee and Jamshedpur School of Art senior instructor Rajesh Bajpayee and teacher Public Biswas.

“Children love to paint. They paint their surroundings as they see it, not only what is immediately perceived but also what is visible to their inner selves. Painting is a powerful medium and a great way to teach the kids how to think out of the box, to experiment, learn cause and effect and think about sustainable practices to preserve and conserve natural resources,” said one of the organisers.

In the juniors’ group, Preetam Maiti of Little Flower School bagged the first prize while Mehul Agarwal of Delhi Public School and Priya Singh of Vidya Bharati Chinmaya Vidyalaya came second and third, respectively.

From the senior section, Md Gufran Haseeb of St Mary’s English School stood first followed by Delhi Public School’s Bidisha and Sony Simran of Church School.