Building a community of youth empowered to connect, create, and communicate for our blue planet.
Global Reach
142 Countries
Participants
44,774 Students
Scholarships
$783,850
The 2026 Ocean Awareness Contest is Now Open!
The 2026 Ocean Awareness Contest – Your Story, Our Ocean – encourages you to explore the many ways our ocean sustains, protects, and inspires us. We invite you to think about your personal connection to the ocean – whether you’re coastal or landlocked – through the value it brings to your life. The benefits of the ocean are widespread and multifaceted, from food production to climate regulation to artistic inspiration. Go through the sub-themes and explore the topics that resonate with you. Share how the ocean has shaped your story through art, writing, performance, film, or multimedia. How does the ocean sustain, protect, and inspire you?
Resource Studio
Visit our Resource Studio, a space for creative exploration and a jumping-off point for deep inquiry of climate change, ocean conservation, and using art and creativity as tools in environmental movements!
Visit Resource StudioContest Gallery
Our student gallery showcases visual art, poetry and spoken word, prose, music, dance, short films, and multimedia projects from past Ocean Awareness Contest winners. Read, watch, admire, and share!
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September 10, 2025
By Cynthia Zhang, 2025 Future Blue Youth Council member & 2024 True Blue Fellow Cover Photo by Prof. André Green,...
Introducing Bow Seat Alumni Advisor – Keren-happuch Garba!
September 3, 2025
By Keren-happuch Garba, Bow Seat Alumni Advisor When I was 13, I experienced water scarcity. The wells in my home...
What’s in a Name? Introducing Our New Organizational Name
September 1, 2025
By Linda Cabot, Bow Seat President & Founder Shakespeare once penned, "What's in a name? That which we call a...
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Sophie Kim
Age 17, Huntington Beach, CA
“What makes Bow Seat so unique is the organization’s focus on engaging youth in climate activism using a creative arts approach. Art is one of the most powerful mediums of self-expression in the world, and pieces of art – whether they be drawings, paintings, collages, poems, or another medium – have the power to invoke passionate emotional responses in a way that audiences and simple facts/statistics cannot.”