A FORMER St Joachim’s School, Holland Park, student will have her artwork displayed nationally after being chosen by Coles for their reusable shopping bags.
Abbey Whalley, a Year 6 student in 2018, was one of only eight winners picked from across Australia in the Coles Community Bag Design Competition.
The school welcomed the young artist back to the school for an exciting whole-school assembly and a presentation from Coles Greenslopes manager Julian Rushworth.
Last year, under the direction of the school’s amazing Visual Arts teacher, Donna Nicholson, students at St Joachim’s entered the Coles Community Bag Design Competition.
Out of the 1000’s of entries from around Australia, Abbey’s awesome artwork was chosen as a winner.
Abbey, who now attends Loreto College, Coorparoo, returned to receive her prize and the congratulations of the entire school community.
She received a $500 gift card as her prize and the school community received $5000 from Coles to put towards a sustainability project at the school.
St Joachim’s Principal Christine Ioannides said the whole school community was very proud of Abbey.
“They will be lining up to get her to autograph the bag now she is a celebrity artist,” she said.
Julian explained to the school community at the assembly that there would be more than a million bags created.
“It is great that we have a bag that will be used all across Australia created from one of our local schools,” he said.
The range will include a tote bag, a shoulder bag, a chiller bag and a jute bag.
All proceeds from the sale of the bags will go towards SecondBite, a leading national food rescue organisation who work with a range of food suppliers to rescue surplus fresh food from across the network and redistribute it to local charities around Australia.