Contributed
Competition co-hosts Thompson and Smith: "The world is a better place if more people are involved in design."
Want to wear your love for the Elm City on your sleeve?
A new T‑shirt design competition is now accepting submissions for apparel that fosters community pride in New Haven.
The competition, organized by the design firm Atelier Cho Thompson and East Rock/Fair Haven Alder Caroline Tanbee Smith, has an initial deadline of January 10, though that’s likely to be extended by a few weeks.
Anyone is eligible to submit a design. The winning entry, selected by a committee, will be printed on 200 T‑shirts for the public and earn the artist a $500 cash prize.
While Atelier already sells New Haven-themed T‑shirts and merchandise, co-founder Ming Thompson said the competition grew out of both a deep love of the city and a desire to invite more people into a local culture of creativity.
“I think the world is a better place if more people are involved in design, share their opinions about design, and see that design has the power to shape experience,” Thompson. “We want to encourage people to be creative, work with different media, and think about and create designs to represent all of New Haven.”
Atelier received a NHE3 grant from the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven to fund the competition.
For Smith, the contest is “a demonstrative way of showing pride for our city” — a sense of pride that can make a city more resilient, she argued, and feed into “small acts of care and neighborly affection and friendship.”
Smith has previously collaborated with Atelier to produce an East Rock informational poster and materials for a piloted Lawrence Street Plaza. She sent out an email about the contest in December and announced it at Thursday evening’s Fair Haven Community Management Team meeting.
Smith noted that she has a growing collection of T‑shirts from various events and organizations in New Haven: including one featuring the Quinnipiac Bridge, one from the Wooster Square Cherry Blossom Festival, one that she designed herself for the annual Rock to Rock bike ride. The shirts are a kind of “archive” representing snapshots of New Haven, she said. “I don’t know if the city can have enough of those.”
“We hope that people have a lot of fun in the act of design, reflecting on what about the city makes them proud and what they love about living here,” she added.
As outlined in the contest’s flyer, here are the submission guidelines and instructions:
1. Design | Create a two-color design (i.e text, image, drawing) for a t‑shirt that celebrates New Haven’s history, community, and culture.
2. Submit | Email the design and a two-sentence artist statement to newhaventshirt@gmail.com by January 10 [or an extended deadline to be announced]. One design per artist please!
3. Selection | A panel of local artists and community members will select the winning design, to be announced early Spring 2025.
4. Announcement | The winner will receive a $500 cash prize, and together we will sell a run of 200 shirts in 2025.
Anyone interested in getting involved in other capacities can email newhaventshirt@gmail.com as well, Smith said.
