Center for Sustainability Solutions hosts art competition


The new USC Center for Sustainability Solutions is hosting an artwork competition to involve students in creating its visual identity, which will appear on all Center materials. 

The Center, which officially opens next semester, is dedicated to educating students and working with local governments, industry, NGOs and regulatory agencies on solutions to environmental issues like climate change and air pollution.

The artwork competition is open to current undergraduate and graduate students. Students, who can work individually or as teams, must submit original artwork that represents the Center and its mission. Entries are due Oct. 25 and will then be judged by a committee of students, faculty and staff who work in the Center.

Bento revealed that finalists for the competition will have an opportunity to explain their entries at a later event followed by a live vote that will decide the three semi-finalists. The top three will then be able to make adjustments to their logo based on the Center’s comments. 

The winner of the competition will receive $1,500 and their design will be used on the Center’s digital, print and physical media. From letterheads to statues, the competition’s winner will have a lasting impact on the Center’s history, according to Antoni Bento, director of the Center for Sustainability.

“The person that will end up winning this art competition … will forever be linked with our center,” Bento said. “By creating the visual identity of the Center, you’re also helping and developing the brand and developing our own identity that can be used … around the world.”

Bento wants to create a strong sense of student involvement within the Center in an effort to make the campus aware of everyone’s role in working toward sustainability. He also hopes to encourage new and creative ways to tackle these issues.

“Historically, we may have not thought a lot about [Virtual Reality] as a mechanism for creating a solution, but it turns out that the arts are incredibly important because we need new ways for communicating the challenges that we’re facing,” Bento said.

Locally, the Center hopes to follow in the footsteps of Los Angeles’s own Green New Deal, launched by Mayor Eric Garcetti in April 2019. Similarly President Carol Folt has also made sustainability a key-player in her plans for the University. However, according to center director Antonio Bento, a professor at the Sol Price School of Public Policy, plans are being made to address more global concerns.

“While our work starts here, in L.A., we also understand that USC is a global institution,” Bento said. “We are launching sustainability solution hubs around the world so that we also help [countries like Beijing, Mexico City, Soa Paulo and Delhi] tackle their challenges.”