The Jamaica Cultural Development Commission (JCDC) will host its 2025 Visual Arts Competition Awards Ceremony and the opening of the Gold Medal Winners Exhibition on Thursday, October 2.

The awards ceremony will commence at 10:00 am at Confucius Institute, The University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona.

Immediately following the ceremony, the exhibition will open at Olympia Art Centre, located at 202 Old Hope Road, Kingston 6.

“[O]ur entrants, from ages six upwards, are all able to showcase their creative talents. We don’t limit or inspire them to go in a particular direction. We say, ‘Whatever you have been so inspired to create over the past two years do share it with the rest of us across the island so that we can, not just view, but also help to celebrate you,’ ” JCDC Visual Arts Development Specialist Dr Winston Campbell said.

He added: “It’s a celebration of our varying creative interests and our varying creative expressions, and we then have teams of adjudicators who review the artworks over four rounds and then we get that outcome that we will now be celebrating.”

Minister of Culture Olivia “Babsy” Grange described this year’s staging as a defining moment: “This year’s record-breaking competition proves that the future of Jamaican visual arts is limitless. With hundreds of first-time entrants and awardees from every parish, we are witnessing the rise of a new generation of talent carrying our culture forward.”

The exhibition, which forms part of the development framework established by the JCDC for entrants in the visual arts competition, showcases the finest submissions received this year.

Campbell shared that there were 1,300 entries this year, with the gold medal exhibition featuring approximately 60 entries.

The exhibition will be open free to the public daily, except Sundays, from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm until Wednesday, October 15, after which the JCDC will mount a series of regional exhibitions of medal-winning artworks.

The 2025 JCDC Visual Arts Competition Awards Ceremony and gold medal winners exhibition are supported by the Musson Foundation, and the Culture, Health, Arts, Sports and Education (CHASE) Fund. The Musson Foundation, partnering with the competition for the first time, will present the Peggy Blades Art Prize to the school that secures the most medals. In addition, the foundation will sponsor the Most Outstanding Teachers Awards, offering cash prizes to the teachers of youth awardees (ages 6–17) who win the highest number of medals.