Scholastic Art & Writing Awards - Alliance for Young Artists & Writers

When you enter work into the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, you must agree to these terms and will be prompted to do so before your work is considered for judging. Your parent/guardian must also agree to them by following the instructions they receive via email. These terms will be a binding agreement once you and your parent or guardian agree to them, so please read them carefully. If we use the word “Awards” here, it means the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, and the word “Alliance” means us, the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, Inc., the nonprofit organization that presents the Awards.

Judging Criteria and Freedom of Expression

Jurors who review Awards entries are asked to weigh three core values: originality, skill, and the emergence of a personal voice or vision in determining whether an entry receives an Award.

Young artists and writers are free to explore any and all topics.

Awards and Scholarships

To learn more about the various ways teens may be recognized through the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, including scholarship opportunities, please visit the Recognition page. The Alliance and its Affiliate Partners may release certain information submitted to the Awards Portal as may be necessary or appropriate to colleges and universities interested in recognizing and supporting teens who have entered the Awards, as well as for consideration for additional scholarship opportunities. For more information about what personal information we collect and what we do with it, see our Privacy Policy.

You may also visit the Awards Calendar and How to Enter page for full details on the Scholastic Awards process and annual timeline.

Eligibility

To participate in the Awards, you must be a teen in grades 7–12, age 13 years or older as of the date of entry, and residing in the United States, U.S. territories or military bases, or Canada.

License

Teens who enter works into the Awards keep all intellectual property rights they have in their works, including copyright. This means, for example, you can enter the same work you submit to the Awards to other scholarship programs or contests, keep the work in your portfolio, and license it to others for non-exclusive publication.

To operate the Awards program and carry out its mission to promote creative self-expression among young people, the Alliance may need to reproduce, excerpt, crop, copy edit and display teen works. To do these things, we need permission from you. By entering your work into the Awards program, you give the Alliance permission to use your work without further approval. Formally, this means you grant the Alliance a license to use, copy, change, publish, publicly perform, distribute, exhibit, or add to your work. This license is perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, transferable, and non-exclusive (with the right to sublicense). The Alliance can use your work in any media, including online.

You also give us permission to use your name, photograph or other image of you, biographical information, and live and taped interviews, appearances, or performances given or made by you in connection with the Awards, including promotion of the Awards and the Alliance. We will give you credit when we use your work in a public way, unless there is a practical reason why we cannot, such as formatting, or if the work is being used in a medium where no individual credits are given. Also, if we mistakenly do not give you credit in any given situation, if you let us know, we will try to correct that for similar uses in the future.

We will not pay you for your entry or our use of your work, except for any cash award or scholarship you may be granted through the Awards.

We may include your work in our annual publications. We will not license your work to others to publish the work under their name for their own commercial gain.

Materials Return

If your work is selected to receive a national award in art, the Alliance may require you to send the original physical work, if applicable, and the Alliance will be allowed to keep that physical work for two years. During those two years, that work may be used in exhibitions throughout the country, so the Alliance will not be able to give you access to the physical work during that time. If we ask you to provide work for exhibition and you do not, we may choose to revoke your award.

After the two-year period, the Alliance will return the physical works using the contact information saved in the portal at the time of entry. For this reason, and to allow for any other necessary or appropriate contact, National Medal recipients must let the Alliance know if their addresses or other contact information changes. The Alliance is not responsible for any non-delivery or loss of, or damage to, participant work that may result from participants’ failure to do so.

If the Alliance is not able to return the physical works to a participant for any reason, including refusal of delivery or lack of forwarding instructions, the Alliance may hold the participant work up to two (2) years from the date of the National Medal notification. If the work is not retrieved by the participant, the Alliance may continue to store the physical work, or it may destroy it.

THE ALLIANCE, THE SCHOLASTIC ART & WRITING AWARDS, SCHOLASTIC INC., ANY SPONSORS OF THE AWARDS, OR ANY OF THEIR RESPECTIVE EMPLOYEES, AGENTS, OR REPRESENTATIVES SHALL NOT HAVE ANY OBLIGATION OR LIABILITY WHATSOEVER FOR ANY LOSS OR NON-DELIVERY OF, OR DAMAGE TO, THE WORK THAT IS NOT CAUSED DIRECTLY BY SUCH PERSON’S OR ENTITY’S WILLFUL OR RECKLESS MISCONDUCT.

Copyright & Plagiarism

All work entered into the Awards must be original and created based on your own ideas. By entering work into the Awards, you agree that you created it and did not copy it from any other person, business, school, or organization and that it is not AI-generated. Any work that infringes anyone’s intellectual property rights will be disqualified. You, not the Alliance, are responsible for getting any necessary consents or releases from people or for any places or property depicted in your work. You agree to comply with our Copyright & Plagiarism Policy, which includes our AI Policy, both of which are part of these Participation Terms.

Violations

The Alliance may revoke a teen’s participation in the Awards and take back or cancel any awards made by the Alliance if we determine, in our sole discretion, that an entry does not meet the requirements of these Participation Terms or other applicable Alliance policies (for example, our Copyright & Plagiarism Policy, or any policies that apply to participants from certain regions) or that a participant has violated these Participation Terms or other Alliance policies in any other way. Any participant whose award is taken back or canceled may not identify himself or herself as the recipient of an award from the Alliance.

National Student Poets Program

If you are selected as (and agree to be) a National Student Poet based on your entry to the Awards, these terms will also apply to your participation in the National Student Poets Program. Additional terms for the National Student Poets Program will be made available to you if applicable.

About the Awards Portal

Participants must have email accounts in order to enter their work into the Awards, because entries can only be received through the Award’s application portal. During the selection process, jurors do not have access to personal information, whether submitted with your entry or otherwise. If you are having technical difficulty with the online registration system, please contact us.

Note to Parents/Guardians: A parent or guardian must review and electronically agree to these Participation Terms. Be sure to read all rules and guidelines with your teens to make sure they understand them and that entries adhere to our guidelines.