Celebrating the 2021 National Medalists during Our First Virtual National Events

National Medalists in the 2021 Scholastic Awards, along with their educators and partners of the program, are invited to attend three days of virtual workshops and webinars focused on building community, fostering your own personal voice and vision, and showcasing the creators behind this year’s award-winning works.

Invitations to register for the virtual National Events have already been sent out via email from coporateconventions@scholastic.com—if you haven’t received your invite, please check your spam folder! Be sure to mark that email address as safe so that you can receive future communications about your registration. Registration ends on June 7, at 10:00 am ET, and some sessions have limited capacity. Don’t wait until it’s too late—register now so that you don’t miss out!

Starting June 7, National Medalists will have the chance to meet and mingle with other students in their grade level, learn ways to tell their stories of grief and loss through art and writing, get tips on worldbuilding, and meet the American Visions Awardees and the Gold Medal Writing Portfolio winners. June 8 will have sessions on fostering a personal voice and expressing a personal vision in the classroom for educators, while students will get the chance to meet the Gold Medal Art Portfolio recipients and the American Voices Awardees, among other activities. On June 9, students can participate in a poetry workshop designed to help them discover their drive to write or attend an editorial cartoon workshop. National Events culminates in the virtual 2021 National Ceremony, a celebration of the National Medalists in the 2021 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, at 7:00 pm ET on June 9.

All of the virtual National Events—except the National Ceremony—are by invitation only. Be sure to check your email for instructions on how to register for these events!

Tune in for the 2021 National Ceremony on June 9

Although the workshops and webinars are by invitation only, all are welcome to attend the 2021 National Ceremony when it premieres on YouTube on June 9 at 7:00 pm ET. Join us as we celebrate this year’s National Medalists! Students are the focus of the National Ceremony, and we’ll be showcasing some of their amazing art and writing that received national honors. We’ll also be joined by some special celebrity guests—we can’t reveal their names just yet, but we promise the wait will be worth it!

Virtual National Exhibition on Display Starting June 7

The 2021 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards Virtual National Exhibition, featuring more than 500 artworks by Gold Medalists from nearly every state, will be on view at artandwriting.org/2021 beginning June 7, 2021.  

Produced during unparalleled times, the artworks in the 2021 National Exhibition capture an exceptional historical moment in the lives of American teens. The student artists in the exhibition—working in a robust variety of traditional and experimental artistic media—have been selected through a rigorous adjudication process facilitated by arts professionals around the country; their award-winning works touch on the full spectrum of human experience through exceptional technical skill and thought-provoking subject matter. 

Creating a Sense of Community

We know the community feels very different right now: we’re spread across the country, have attended more Zoom calls than we can count, and have spent most of the past year indoors. 

To help bring back that community feeling to the Scholastic Awards and connect students to their fellow National Medalists, we’re excited to announce that starting June 1, students will be able to meet each other through our community portal Flipgrid! Invitations to join the Flipgrid community will be sent to students who register for National Events.

Special thanks to:

With additional thanks to Amazon Web Services; American Eagle Outfitters Foundation; Heidi and Brian Berghuis; BR Printers; CJK Group Inc.; Ernst & Young; Grafica Veneta/Lake Book Manufacturing; HSBC Bank USA, N.A.; IBM; Jay Pritzker Foundation; J.T. Magen & Company; Jill and Peter Kraus; LSC Communications; Gregory Miller; One Earth Fund; Phoenix Color; Picturestart; PricewaterhouseCoopers; Relevance Lab; Resolute Forest Products; Robert Lehman Foundation; The Roome Fund; The Salamander Fund of the Triangle Community Foundation; Stroock; Sun Vigor Printing Co. Ltd.; UPS; and to numerous other individuals, foundations, and corporations for their support.