2025 Awards Announcement
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You shared 275 artworks and poems from 191 awesome young talents!
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We were thrilled and deeply touched by your inspirations and life stories!
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Awards are SO limited, creating is priceless!
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Huge congrats to all: winners, participants, teachers, and parents! Keep shining and creating!
To 2025 "The Colors of Me" - Susan Shi
The curtain has fallen on another year of the Tian Hong Cross-Cultural Youth Poem and Art Contest. Guided by this year’s theme, “The Colors of Me,” we received nearly 300 poems and artworks from close to 200 young participants.
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Selecting just over 60 winning entries from such a vibrant collection was no easy task. Each young artist brought a unique way of seeing and sensing the world, each with their own artistic or literary style.​
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We are deeply grateful to these young creators. In many ways, it feels less like Tian Hong is serving them, and more like they have given us boundless inspiration. In an era of rapid AI advancement, our platform will continue to celebrate human creativity. Humans can create AI, guide AI, and AI can in turn enrich human life. But human creativity should never shrink before AI, rather, it should take wings and soar higher and farther! Our blessings go to all the young poets and artists!
TIAN HONG ANNUAL CROSS CULTURAL YOUTH POEM & ART CONTESTS
A non-profit platform serving cross cultural youth poem & art community
Objectives:
Provide an annual no-entrance-fee contest for young poem & art community (age 4-21)
Facilitate poem and art creation and appreciation cross culturally
Cultivate creativity and independent practice reflecting each year's main theme
Award young talents especially around theme depth, poem & artwork originality and artistic technique
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Annual contest timeline:
main theme & detailed process announcement: April
all poem & artwork submissions due: July
Award announcement & distribution: mid Aug - early Sep
Tian Hong holiday party: Dec
(specific date may vary from year to year)
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Words from Tian Hong Youth Poem & Art Contest Review Panel:
Young contestants, have fun, express yourself via poem or art, and enjoy your journey!
DANUTA HUTCHINS
Artist & Linguist
As a passionate member of our judge panel, Danuta brings with her a rich background in Linguistics and 25 years of experience as a professional artist. She has offered numerous art workshops in the past and her artworks have been exhibited and acquired by various museums, galleries, universities and private art lovers across her home state of Iowa and the nation.
FARZI R.
Artist
Farzi loved painting as a child and only got back to painting in 2006 as a way to relax from her demanding job in the IT field. She attended an oil painting class for 8 years, originally focusing on old master’s techniques before switching to digital art in 2015. These days she is back working with oil on canvas and trying on new painting techniques. She gets inspirations from her walks in the nearby Bayland.
SUSAN SHI
Co-Founder, CFO & COO of Tian Hong Foundation
Susan has worked in various Finance positions at HP and Google before co-founding and working as CFO and COO of Tian Hong Foundation. She likes to write, dance and paint. In recent years, she has found tremendous joy in hosting annual Tian Hong cross cultural youth art contests and creating Poetic Life Studio promoting happiness and arts & cultural appreciation.
SOME WORDS FROM CONTESTANTS & FAMILY
"How exciting and honored we are to be selected among so many wonderful entries. It was a delight to see the presentation and excellent work. On behalf of my daughters, we are very grateful for this opportunity and look forward to participating again in the future. "
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"Thanks so much for the opportunity. I'm so happy that I even got an encouragement award! I appreciate it a lot."
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"I'm so honored to have had one of my works chosen for this year's Tian Hong Cross Cultural Youth Poem and Art Contest! The assortment of excellent and artistically compelling pieces is truly an amazing feat of ingenuity among all the participants."
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"Thank you for organizing and encouraging young artists"
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"Thank you for the exciting news! Putting such personal work out there was not easy for me, and it means so much for it to be recognized. I am truly honored. I am grateful for being given this opportunity and grateful for the award money, which will help me pay for college."
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"I am overjoyed to hear the wonderful news that both of my children, have won awards in the art and poem contest. Their hard work and creativity truly shine through, and I am incredibly proud of them."
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"Thank you for inspiring young kids to be creative. Our kid has been really motivated by the contest."
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"Thank you so much for holding the annual Tian Hong cross cultural youth contest, and keeping the contest refreshing with new categories. This is my first entry to the poem contest and I learned so much. I now understand how to use more figurative language with sensory words and imagery in poetry!"
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"Thank you so much for the Most noticeable fun with the process award. Indeed I find the annual Tian Hong contest to be a great channel to express myself and I get to enjoy every step of the creative process! I am so glad I get to grow up with Tian Hong."
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"Keep up the good work. Integrating multicultural values makes us stronger."
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"Thank you for providing youth an opportunity to express their love for art and to share their talent!"
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"Everything is great and my daughter wishes to participate in the next year as well!"
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"It’s a great platform to encourage artists from all age groups , keep up the great work , thank you 😊"
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"This is a wonderful initiative! Our child loves being a participant in the Tian Hong annual youth art contest for the last 2 years. The themes are very well thought of. Thank you so much for conducting this event every year! 😊"
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"Its very much appreciated for given a chance to participate all artist in other countries . Hope you will continue this in every year. Thank you so much and your great effort highly appreciated ."
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"The way the contest is set up is easy to understand, the themes are engaging and inspirational, and the submission process is simple."
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"I love this contest and it's such an enjoyable and awesome experience to participate in. It would be cool if there were more contests a year! (Maybe mini ones)"
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"Thank you for organizing! This is the very first time we have heard of your program and it is wonderful."
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"Good initiative to bring everyone together under one umbrella."
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