Progress North Texas Student Art Contest
The North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) invites students from kindergarten through 12th grade in Irving ISD to create artwork that illustrates how transportation can be used to make Dallas-Fort Worth a region of choice.
The winning piece of art will be on the cover of Progress North Texas 2025, a magazine NCTCOG publishes each year with information about plans for roads, rail, bicycle lanes and more. Other top finishers will be featured inside, and the art will appear online at www.nctcog.org/ourregion.
Theme
The theme “A Region of Choice” invites you to explore why the Dallas-Fort Worth area is a top destination for people, especially when it comes to transportation. We want you to create artwork that shows how our region is connected and accessible, making it easier for people to live, work, and travel here. Think about the variety of transportation options that make DFW special, like the extensive passenger rail system, roadways and bike paths that link Dallas and Fort Worth to neighboring cities. Or there is the renowned DFW Airport, which connects us to places all over the globe.
Your artwork should capture why people choose to call this region home—whether it’s the convenience of getting around, the modern transit systems, or the way transportation helps bring our diverse communities together.
Contest Rules
Medium: Artwork may be on white paper or created digitally.
Approved art instruments: Watercolor, acrylic, oil paint, permanent marker pens, felt-tip pens, soft ball-point pens, permanent ink, crayons, colored pencils, tempera or any similar permanent instrument.
Prohibited art instruments: Anything that may smudge or smear.
Other Details: No purchase necessary. All artwork must be original and student-produced using any of the approved instruments listed. When submitting their artwork, students must provide their name, grade, school and parent contact phone number and email. Participants must be Irving I.S.D. students during the contest.
Artwork will NOT be returned to the participants. Entry into the contest constitutes permission for NCTCOG to use the artwork in Progress North Texas and other department print, online publications and social media, and display it.
Entry Details
Who: Irving Independent School District Students, Grades K -12
When: Entries must be turned in by Friday, January 24, 2025.
How: Teachers will submit the original entries to Gayla Lawrence, Irving ISD Director of Visual Arts. She will create a Google folder containing the chosen photographed submissions to be shared with Brian Wilson at NCTCOG.
Judging & Prizes
Judging and prizes: A panel of transportation professionals and elected officials will judge artwork on the following criteria: adherence to theme, creativity, technical ability, artistic merit and presentation.
Grand prize artwork will appear on the cover of Progress North Texas 2025, a magazine NCTCOG publishes each year with information about plans for roads, rail, bicycle lanes and more. The Grand Prize winner will receive a framed copy of the cover.
A winner from each grade level, elementary (K-5), junior high/middle school (6-8) and high school (9-12) will be selected, and the artwork will be featured inside Progress North Texas 2025.
Each winner will also receive a gift card!
Winners and their parents will be contacted using the information provided.
For additional information contact, Gayla Lawrence, Irving ISD Director of Visual Arts at glawrence@irvingisd.net
Who We Are
The North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) is a voluntary association of local governments established in 1966 to assist local governments in planning for common needs, cooperating for mutual benefit and coordinating for sound regional development. NCTCOG’s purpose is to strengthen both the individual and collective powers of local governments and to help them recognize regional opportunities, eliminate unnecessary duplication and make joint decisions.
The Transportation Department at NCTCOG, together with the Regional Transportation Council, serves as the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Since being federally designated as the MPO in 1974, NCTCOG has collaborated closely with regional transportation providers to meet the evolving and complex transportation needs of this rapidly growing region.