Eleanor Worthington-Odv Prize Association

History. Initial project

ELEANOR WORTHINGTON PRIZE

Eleanor Worthington (York, UK, 1982 – Urbino, Italy, 2008) suffered lifelong from a severe form of epilepsy and learning and behavioural difficulties, and spent her last five years immobile and confined to a wheelchair, unable to speak, and only expressing herself with her eyes and face. Beyond her disabilities, she was a person of high intelligence and sensibility, and with a great force of personality. She succeeded in having a life full of affection, social relations, and experiences, both in the UK and in Italy, where she attended all the years of the Istituto Statale d’Arte (now Liceo Artistico) in Urbino.

Eleanor’s family, friends and school wanted to transform her individual story into a collective experience, with the aim of raising public consciousness of the issue of disability. To this end, they instituted the “Eleanor Worthington Prize”, run in collaboration with the Liceo Artistico Scuola del Libro (previously: Istituto Statale d’Arte), Urbino, and with the patronage of the Urbino Local Authority.

The competition privileges the language of visual communication; in its first three years it explored the theme “Tolerance and Capability”.