10 teams took part in the final, and they had the opportunity to exhibit their works at the East Slovak Gallery. The judging took longer than originally announced. The reason was the close ranking of the teams, which were very evenly matched. The theme Collecting/Collecting raised various interesting questions and approaches.

The jury ultimately decided that third place would go to the project Collector’s Item by the Rest-ART group, prepared by Bohuslav Argaláš and Ivan Večerek from the Private Secondary School of Applied Arts in Žilina. Under the guidance of Anna Brunová, they created a comic carved into linoleum that captures a story about a collector. To distribute the comic, the authors chose an electronic form, which visitors can download to their device after scanning a QR code. It is available online at:
https://drive.google.com/drive/mobile/folders/1RGOUwWOb5_SrrypFDOf-C53Jv_uZXnVa?usp=sharing

The jury awarded second place to the work titled Collection Bags. Its authors are Tamara Mižáková and Samuel Alex Jasaň from the Private Secondary Film School in Košice, under the guidance of Erik Sikora. Their installation includes photographic records, a video with a presentation, and an interactive component consisting of viewers hanging plastic bags on a dried-up tree.

Determining the winning team was not easy at all. Until the very last moment, the jury deliberated on the victory, reassessed its decision, and looked for details that might still persuade it. However, the final verdict was reached, and the winners of the 3rd year of the competition were the work V.Ž. by Frederika Lukáčová, Katarína Žiaková, Natália Laubertová and Paulína Vörösmartyová from the Secondary Vocational School of Information Technologies in Banská Bystrica, under the guidance of Marianna Mlynárčiková. The jury was particularly impressed by the social dimension of this project, in which the students stepped out of their comfort zone and began working with a person experiencing homelessness. The output of their work was an audio recording creating noise and a mixture of information. Two additional outputs were also created: a graphic book documenting photos, texts and other notes, as well as an Instagram profile where the aforementioned book can be supported: https://www.instagram.com/kniha.vladkozeleznak/ . However, the support is not only for the publication of the book, but also for V.Ž. himself, through the purchase of things he needs using the remaining money from the sale of the book.

The current edition once again showed how diversely even a topic we encounter in everyday life can be approached. We could see this, for example, in a work about collecting titles, as a critique of the practices involved in awarding university degrees to figures in Slovak politics; in several years of collecting public transport tickets as witnesses to lost time; collecting time using an app; collecting artifacts from family history; collecting shadows in a single room; or collecting and assigning flowers from a herbarium to various people. During the creative process, the projects evolved into their final versions, but that was only half the success. Each team tried out presenting and defending their work before an audience and a jury, which is not always the easiest task. That is why this competition is not only about the outputs themselves, but also about pushing beyond one’s courage, discovering one’s limits, and setting challenges for oneself.