The Royal Photographic Society is supporting The Prince’s Foundation for Children & The Arts on the UK’s largest ever art project – Face Britain. See:  www.facebritain.org.uk

Through the medium of self-portraiture, the aim is to celebrate the nation’s children and young people during the lead up to HM The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, The London Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Face Britain is open to anyone aged 4-16 years in the UK, regardless of drawing or learning ability.   Self-portraits in any medium will be accepted including photography and photo montage, as well as painting, abstract, graphics, 3-D, cartoon or collage.   They can be uploaded onto the Face Britain Online Gallery, brought to life by PhotoBox, until the end of March 2012.

Children and teenagers have been actively engaging in Face Britain in schools across the UK. The Online Gallery already hosts over 7,500 portraits in a colourful variety of styles and approaches including photography.   The portraits will be stored in perpetuity for the nation, thereby providing a lasting legacy and a vibrant snapshot of the 2012 Generation.

As an official Guinness World Records attempt, the portraits will be combined to create a montage image of HM The Queen that will be projected onto Buckingham Palace in April 2012.   This image will also be showcased on the national network of BBC Big Screens/Olympic Live Sites and on over 400 JCDecaux digital advertising screens in major train stations and shopping malls across the UK. 

Face Britain is mostly being driven through schools and the website features a wide range of teaching resource to support classroom activity and study topics with content provided by The National Portrait Gallery and Getty Images. 

To help provide inspiration, a growing number of artists, designers, authors, celebrities and sports legends have been invited to be Face Britain Patrons and to join the nation’s children and young people in creating a self-portrait.  The aim is to represent British creativity, culture and sporting achievement during the seven decades of Her Majesty’s reign.  Over 60 Patrons have been enlisted to date including Rankin, Tracey Emin, Gavin Turk, Sir Paul Smith, Michael Morpurgo, Dame Mary Peters, Sir Geoff Hurst, Ade Adepitan, Amir Khan and Rory McIlroy to name but a few.

Closing date for submissions is 31^st March 2012.  For further details and to find out how to take part visit www.facebritain.org.uk