City centre gallery business has run its Liverpool city region schools competition for the past five years and this year more than 900 students took part culminating in a ceremony and exhibition at St George’s Hall

Works from some of the Liverpool city region’s best young artists are now on display at St George’s Hall following this year’s dot-art schools competition.

The city centre-based gallery business has organised the competition for five years for school across Merseyside.

Once each school has signed up to take part dot-art creates a page on a website. The school takes pictures of their kids’ work and fill in a form about each piece of work and each page can feature up to 25 pieces.

More than 900 pupils from dozens of schools across the city region took part this year and the overall winners were announced at a ceremony at St George’s Hall.

Erin Gerrard, a year 9 student from The Sutton Academy in St Helens and Grace McKeown, a Year 5 student from Knotty Ash Primary School, were crowned the overall winners.

Erin’s winning pen drawing was titled “Intergalactic” and Grace’s charcoal drawing titled “Lost Soul” and both feature alongside the other shortlisted artworks on display to the public at St George’s Hall between 10am and 4.30pm until Saturday, July 1.

Carolyn Murray, who runs the schools competition at dot-art said the success of the Merseyside event had led to the setting up of a parallel contest for schools in Cheshire, supported by Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU).

Carolyn said: “A wonderful new LJMU Scholarship prize was announced by Professor Caroline Wilkinson, which will provide £1,000 per year scholarship for the Year 9 winner and two runners up, if they are accepted onto an undergraduate course at Liverpool School of Art & Design in the future.

“The standard of work was outstanding again this year and it’s thrilling to see we have so many talented young artists in the region.”

The judging panel was made up of representatives from some of the region’s best-known arts and cultural institutions, including Liverpool Biennial, National Museums Liverpool and Liverpool School of Art & Design, who selected their top three entries from each school for a public vote.

The public was then encouraged to vote online for their favourite piece of work from each school to form part of the exhibition.