The 2025 Canadian Art Inspiration
Student Challenge

How do you raise awareness? What do your family traditions look like? What is your most prized possession? In celebration of ACI’s fifth annual Student Challenge, we asked questions such as these to students across Canada in the hopes of finding remarkable talent influenced by our country’s most innovative makers. With overwhelming enthusiasm, young artists in Grades 7 through 12 from coast to coast to coast responded. Their incredible creations—inspired by Canadian icons like Carl Beam (1943–2005), Edith Clayton (1920–1989), Betty Goodwin (1923–2008), and Takao Tanabe (b.1926)—engage with themes of identity, memory, and activism in riffs on Canada’s visual heritage that are inspiring in their own right. With this exhibition, ACI showcases the talent of our 2025 finalists who have sparked dialogues with the visionary artists who preceded them, asserting with fervour that the next generation of artists will continue Canada’s enduring legacy of creative innovation.