The Royal Commonwealth Society is encouraging young writers to take part in The Queen’s Commonwealth Essay Competition for a chance to win a trip to London. One winner and one runner-up in the senior and junior categories will be flown to the city to attend a special awards ceremony with the Duchess of Cornwall at Buckingham Palace.
The Queen’s Commonwealth Essay Competition is the world’s oldest schools international writing competition, run by The Royal Commonwealth Society since 1883. The competition is open to all citizens and residents of the Commonwealth aged 18 and under as of 1 May 2017 and participants can enter individually or as part of their school.
This year’s theme, A Commonwealth for Peace, is an important and contemporary one. Recent international events mean that there has rarely been a time when peace has been a more important issue for young people.
Sponsored by Cambridge University Press, this highly prestigious competition aims to challenge young people’s thinking and the means by which they can express their views, using creative forms of writing such as essays, poems, stories or scripts.
Michael Lake, Director of The Royal Commonwealth Society, said: ‘Peace is at the heart of the Commonwealth as one of the core articles of the Commonwealth Charter. This year’s theme of A Commonwealth for Peace asks young writers to explore peace at every level: from the personal to the political to the pan-Commonwealth.’
Cambridge Rod Smith, Managing Director of Education at Cambridge University Press, said: ‘The Royal Commonwealth Society shares our vision of empowerment through education, and we’re thrilled to be sponsoring The Queen’s Commonwealth Essay Competition once again. We were astounded by the exceptional standard of entries in last year’s competition and are looking forward to celebrating exciting new work and to finding new voices from across the Commonwealth in 2017.’
The deadline for the competition is 1 May 2017. More information is available online at www.thercs.org/youth/competitions.
