As we continue this year’s “It Starts With the Arts” Campaign, the NYC Arts in Education Roundtable is thrilled to announce the selected artists from our citywide visual art and poetry competition to recognize and celebrate the talent of New York City students.
All entries were inspired by the question, “Why do the arts matter?” We received art and poetry from students across the five boroughs. Winning artists were selected by members of the NYC Arts in Education Roundtable’s Advocacy Committee made up of educators, teaching artists, and cultural workers.
Winners for this competition have had their artwork printed on “It Starts With the Arts” campaign materials and will be featured on our social media in the coming months.
Scroll down to meet our seven winners and five runners up for this year’s “It Starts With the Arts” Student Art & Poetry Competition and learn more about the creation and inspiration behind their pieces.
Visual Art Winners
The Charm and Life of Arts
By Jin Xin C., Brooklyn, Age 13
My artwork expresses how art exists in different parts of the world in numerous forms, embedding itself deeply into this city and its people. Every city becomes beautiful and colorful with art. Arts education is important because art brings joy and self-expression. It allows for character development and growth as both an artist and an individual.
Art is also free, just, and healing; acting not only as a bridge connecting the hearts of people, promoting communication and exchange and allowing for people of different backgrounds to resonate with one another, but also as a beam of light illuminating our lives. Arts bring courage, empowerment, resilience, hope, expression, communication, understanding, inspiration, change, warmth, and improvement. Just imagine: if our city didn’t have arts, then what would our city lives be like?
Arts Can Change Your Life
By Vincent C., Brooklyn, Age 8
Arts education is important because it can help and change us. It can also bring fun and happiness. In the past, I was a shy boy and didn’t like to talk. Arts let me make a lot of friends, and made my life full of fun. Also, arts made me brave and confident. My life became very colorful and beautiful!
Big Steps in the Big City
By Zoie F., Bronx, Age 14
I think all students should have access to arts education because art is a fun way to share interests and opinions. It is a fun way to express thoughts and feelings. In this drawing, I’m expressing how I moved from living in a more open space to a crowded city. At first, I hated it. Now I can’t go to sleep without sound. I started liking the crowded noises. I had to take some big steps to get used to the city.
I also like the art this city has. It made me wanna draw in a cartoonish way. The many different colors made the art pop even more. I love adding a bunch of different colors to my art. So this is why I made this and why I drew it this way.
Poetry Winners
Where the City Breathes
By Elienai L., Queens, Age 18
I think all students should have access to arts education because somewhere inside every child there is a story waiting to be heard, a color waiting to be seen, a song waiting to be sung and the arts give them permission to exist.
My poem is about how the arts give life to a city, especially a place like New York City, and how creativity connects people who might otherwise feel like strangers. My process was about thinking of art as a heartbeat, something steady and essential. I asked myself: What would a city feel like without art? The answer felt empty. So I wrote the poem as a reminder that the arts are not extra decoration; they are what make a place and its people… feel alive.
Why do the arts matter?
Because in a city like New York City,
the buildings may touch the sky
but it’s the music underground that keeps it alive.
Because my family speaks in different accents,
but we hum the same old song in the kitchen.
Because murals bloom on brick walls
where hope once felt forgotten.
The arts are the heartbeat between strangers
on a crowded train
a violin’s cry softening
the steel and the rush.
They are stories stitched into sidewalks,
dancers turning concrete into clouds,
poems rising like steam from winter streets.
The arts matter
because they remind the world
that even in noise,
we are listening
and even in darkness,
we are creating light.
Small Hands
By Nari P., Queens, Age 11
My hands are small, but art is big. It lets my heart feel brave and free. Through colors, bright, and gentle shapes, I show the world the real me. Arts education can change the world with just one small and hopeful heart.
A quiet child lifts a brush,
soft as a whisper in the air.
With gentle hands and careful touch,
colors begin to bloom everywhere.
A tiny motion, light and slow,
turns gray streets into skies of blue.
Birds of music start to glow,
and laughter dances through the view.
A little step, a subtle sway,
a spark of joy, a painted dream.
Freedom grows in quiet ways,
flowing bright like a shining stream.
Art begins with hands so small,
a single color, brave and true.
Yet somehow it can change us all,
bringing light the whole world through.
In every brush and every line,
a softer, kinder world appears.
Where freedom, hope, and happiness shine,
and lift the hearts of all who hear.
Where Art Lives
By Prisha H., Manhattan, Age 9
Arts education is important because it helps me express myself and feel happy! In my poem, I talk about how art is everywhere in everyday life. Many people think art is only paintings in a museum, but I believe art is much more than that. It can be found in small, simple things around us.
When I wrote this poem, I thought about the little moments that feel creative or beautiful with art in nature and around us. My goal was to show that art is not only something we hang in frames, but something that lives and moves all around us every day. I love my art classes and my school because it helps me explore art in nature and make even hard classes fun with creative art!
Art begins with a kid and a small poem.
A simple line, a little rhyme,
the first colors of imagination.
Art is the beauty in everyday life.
It is my feelings and my expressions.
It is in cloudy skies and soft haze,
in birds weaving their nests,
and in the ripples of ocean waves.
It is in cooking breakfast with love,
in building tall towers with boxes,
in cleaning a messy little room
until it feels bright and free.
Art is in a rainbow after rain,
in the calm of the beach,
and in the busy city
full of deep textures and sounds.
Art connects people
those who walk quietly in crowded streets
and those who smile
with their colors shining loud.
Art is not only a painting in a frame.
It is alive and moving,
playing all around us
every single day.
To view Prisha’s poem with the original Word Art and font colors, click here.
The Key to My Cuffs
By Owen P., Manhattan, Age 13
Arts education is important because it unleashes your inner creativity. On top of this, art has a rich history and is a way to see and understand the world. My poem is about how I, as a child with ADHD, have a lot of trouble with staying focused in certain classes and also accepting that the world is full of yes or no answers, and how art helps me cope with that and show me that it’s not always true.
In my poem, the metaphor for this dilemma is a pair of handcuffs that hold me down, and in this poem, art, always creative and always interesting, helps me understand the world.
Visual Art Runners Up
The Artist in Me
By Mei S., Manhattan, Age 10
Arts education is important because it is a way to go into my own world, where people can’t bother me. Making art makes me happy. What my art means to the world is being able to share my art with friends and family. It can show my community how much I enjoy art. Making art shouldn’t be about perfection, but about the joy of doing it.
My art piece represents how I create my art. I’m inspired by different artists and musicians. So in the art piece it shows me drawing other artists with all my ideas surrounding me. I love incorporating anime art. My art also shows all of the things I support and like. One of those things is Percy Jackson and new characters developed by my friends and myself.
New York Dreams
By Nastassia K., Manhattan, Age 12
Arts education is important because it lets people express themselves and create their own world to live in. Using arts can be a coping mechanism, a way of protest, or a way to share opinions.
In my artwork, I incorporated different parts of my life and my imagination. In the middle of my artwork is a girl floating in her own imagination. Growing on her are a tree and two mushrooms on her leg. These represent hope, and a new beginning that she will soon face. All around the painting are different art supplies; this represents the tools that the subject can use to depict her world of fantasy that is colliding with the real world. That is why in the bottom left there is a crack sealed by tape to show connection to reality.
Poetry Runners Up
Painting Roots
By Alma A., Manhattan, Age 16
I think all students should have access to arts education because it makes all the difference in a student’s ability to express themselves. Without the arts, a student is less able to process the world, the institutions they navigate, or their own thoughts and feelings.
For this poem, I was inspired by my elementary school art classes, and I wanted to show how artistic expression becomes a way to process the world. As I’ve grown, the arts have enabled me to stand up to authority and it’s been an outlet for me to explore what different things mean to me. I wouldn’t be where I am without an arts education, and that’s where the title “Painting Roots” came from: creating art was my way of creating roots to ground myself in, roots that I have grown from to become the person I am today.
in the center of elementary school art assignments, my twig frame
manifested in acrylic and towered over my family like
a grand tree – I was the main character of my painted world, after all.
grown and beautiful, long hair and a triangle dress,
glowing orange skin and shiny yellow sun staring down at me everywhere
in the playground after school
across my mother’s fretting face as she fed the sun
at night with electricity bills
through the slats of windows where I posed with balloons
for my 8th, now my 12th,
now my 16th birthday and
my world is no longer primary colors
but I know how to mix them to
saturate my palate into gradient
of all the ways I can
paint the world – I am the main character of my life, after all,
and turns paint into perspective myself standing tall in front of authority figures, to capture the
gleam of the street signs and the sparkle of family dinner,
and it all starts with the arts that became the roots
for the towering tree I have become
and the artist I’ve always been.
Arts Matter
By Luka Z., Manhattan, Age 14
Arts enrich our lives and foster creativity, expanding everyone’s potential. I made an acrostic poem that spells out “ARTS MATTER”. Sometimes, the best way to express something is to just say it.
Arts are a window into one’s soul,
Rays of light in a technology-driven world.
Though AI can copy, it can’t create original work
Singing, dancing, writing—all wonders of their own.
Music, visual arts, sculpting,
Architecture, photography to name a few.
These practices make life exulting,
They expand people’s worldview.
Enrich New Yorkers’ lives- from subway music to Harlem murals –
Reach for the sky to maximize your potential—when we foster creativity, we all win.
Art Oh Art
By Nikita G., Manhattan, Age 13
Arts education is important because it helps make sense of the world. My poem is a personal thank you note to ART. I love letting the words just flow out.
Art oh art
How you express,
if it weren’t for you
the world would be
a mess.
Feelings would get tangled
inside our heads, art oh art
you are truly the best.
Art oh art how you
sometimes bring tears to
our eyes through the heart breathing
stories you were created by.
Without you our minds would
ache from carrying the weight
so we truly have you to
thank.
Art oh art
you speak in many
ways. Not only you are pretty
you are also exciting. You
are never ending joy to
create and without you our
hearts would ache.