[press release]
Royal Mail Stamps to Honour Heroes of The Pandemic
The Prime Minister and Royal Mail Are Launching a Competition for UK Schoolchildren to Design Stamps Marking the Amazing Work of Key Workers and Others During The Pandemic
- The Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Royal Mail today announce a competition giving school-age children the chance to design a set of stamps featuring ‘heroes of the pandemic’
- The competition is open to children aged 4-14 through school entries or independently via parents, home educators, carers and clubs
- The designs are set to highlight the amazing work played by key workers and others in keeping the UK connected during these unprecedented times
- A special judging panel will select eight winning images created by school children from across the UK
- The Prime Minister Boris Johnson, said: From our family members, teachers, doctors and nurses to our vaccine scientists and fundraisers, we want to recognise and remember them
- Only four times in Royal Mail’s 500-year history have designs created by children been used on stamps; 1966; 1981; 2013; and 2017
- The eight winning stamps will be picked from 120 regional finalists
- The competition’s theme is: “Heroes of the Pandemic”. All entries have to be received by the closing date of Friday 28 May, 2021
- The winners will follow in the footsteps of highly acclaimed children’s designers and illustrators who have designed stamps in the past, such as, Quentin Blake (2012), Nick Park (2010) and Axel Scheffler (2012)
- The eight winners will be announced in the Autumn
- Full details can be found at www.royalmail.com/stampcompetition
The Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Royal Mail today announced the launch of a stamp design competition for UK schoolchildren to mark the important role played by key and 
frontline workers, as well as others, during the pandemic.
The competition will give children, aged 4 to 14, the chance to design an official Royal Mail stamp as part of a special set of eight. Children will be asked to think about who their hero or heroes are, and to design a stamp in their honour.
A special panel of judges will determine the winning designs which will feature on a set of eight Royal Mail stamps and appear on millions of items of mail across the UK. The stamps will celebrate the many who have done great things since the start of the pandemic and helped the country through people a very challenging period.
The subjects are wide ranging. Children may choose to illustrate frontline workers who work in health or social care. They may also want to celebrate some of the millions of key workers who have helped keep the UK connected during this time. This could include, for example, refuse collectors, cleaning staff, teachers, supermarket workers, public transport staff, delivery drivers and, indeed, postmen and postwomen. There have also been many volunteers who have helped in their local communities or raised money for charity, such as Captain Sir Tom Moore.
Full details can be found at www.royalmail.com/stampcompetition
As with all Special Stamps issued by Royal Mail, the final eight stamps will be sent to Her Majesty The Queen before they can be printed and issued.
Only four times in the company’s 500-year history have children designed official Royal Mail stamps – in 1966 and 1981, 2013 and 2017.
The winners will follow in the footsteps of highly acclaimed children’s designers and illustrators who have designed stamps in the past, such as, Quentin Blake (1993), Nick Park (2010) and Axel Scheffler (2012).
Prime Minister Boris Johnson said: “The last year has been one of the most difficult any of us can remember, but throughout it all our COVID Heroes have been there for us, inspired us and done so much for others.
“From our family members, teachers, doctors and nurses to our vaccine scientists and fundraisers, we want to recognise and remember them.
“That’s why we’re launching a special competition with Royal Mail for children across the country to design a new stamp collection featuring their Covid Heroes – so we can honour their tremendous work.”
Simon Thompson, Royal Mail CEO, said: “We are so excited to launch this competition and give eight UK schoolchildren the opportunity to use their own creative flair to celebrate the heroes who have gone above and beyond during the pandemic. Over the past year there have been so many wonderful examples of people who, despite much uncertainty and fear, have continued about their work with such admirable determination and pride. They have helped us cope during what has been an extremely testing time. I look forward to seeing the winning stamp designs – best of luck!”
How It Works
The competition is open to children aged 4-14 through school entries or independently via parents and home educators. Childminders, volunteer leaders, carers and clubs can also enter children into the competition.
Schools, and parents/guardians of home-schooled children, can sign-up to the competition online or by returning the application form in a pack sent to them by iChild, the online educational resource centre, in association with Royal Mail.
Applications for the 6,000 available resource packs will be sent out on a first-come, first served basis. Entries must be received by the closing date of Friday 28 May 2021.
The winners of the competition will be announced in the autumn and the stamps will be available in the spring of 2022.
Royal Mail will select 120 regional runners-up across the UK. They, and their schools, will each receive prizes of £100 for the school and £100 gift vouchers for the child.
From those 120 runners-up, a shortlist of 24 finalists will be chosen. They and their schools will receive prizes of £500 for the school and £500 of gift vouchers for the child.
From the finalists eight winners will be chosen. They will also receive prizes of £1,000 for the school and £1,000 in vouchers for the child.
Royal Mail today reveals images of four Special Stamps to be issued in celebration of the United Kingdom’s greatest strengths and accomplishments. The stamps explore just some of the ways in which Britain leads the way. From sporting achievement to technological innovation, and from creative excellence to our strong sense of community spirit, the UK 
excels in a host of different ways. The four stamps are printed within a miniature sheet in a colourful interpretation of the Union Flag.
Industry and Innovation: 
Creative industries: 
Community spirit: 
Philip Parker, Royal Mail, said: “There are so many great things about the UK, not least our contribution to the wider world. This stamp issue pays tribute to just a few of the things for which the UK is best known – sporting achievement, technological innovation, creative industries and a strong sense of community spirit. These colourful stamps are a celebration of these islands and the people who call them home”.
Dartmoor is a world of high moorland, open space and huge skies. Here is a place to roam for miles across high and wild expanses punctuated with spectacular granite outcrops, called tors, which stand proud of the landscape like castles. But although the world of humans can feel far away indeed, this once-forested landscape is strewn with remains from 12,000 years of habitation, agriculture and industry. Visitors to the park are bound to encounter Neolithic stone circles, Bronze Age burial mounds and Iron Age hill forts. Dartmoor’s uplands are still farmed in the same ways they have been for centuries.
The New Forest is actually very old: it was created as a hunting forest almost a millennium ago by William the Conqueror, and centuries of use for grazing, timber and fuel have produced a landscape that is more of a mosaic of heathland, open pasture and ancient woodland dotted with mires and streams. Much of this area is not enclosed, meaning that ponies, donkeys and cattle owned by local people called Commoners roam freely. The National Park also has 42km of coastline, with spectacular views across to the Isle of Wight. The New Forest is a wonderful haven for wildlife and people alike.
William Wordsworth described the Lake District as “a sort of national property”. This could apply to all of the UK’s National Parks, but few can lay claim to as many hearts as this one. The ingredients of the landscape — a UNESCO World Heritage Site — include volcanic uproar 450 million years ago, the sculpting power of Ice Age glaciers and the much more recent handiwork of sheep farmers. For centuries now, the area has seduced visitors with the gentle pastoral ambience of its villages and valleys, the splendour of its lakes and the ruggedly sublime beauty of its fells. The obsession of the English Romantics with the Lake District helped crystallise the appeal of this iconic landscape.
Bejewelled with emerald islands, fringed with beautiful wooded shores and surrounded by grand hills and mountains, Loch Lomond is where the Scottish Highlands ‘begin’. This National Park encloses 21 Munros (Scottish mountains above 3,000ft, or 914.4m) and includes some of the most popular mountains in Scotland, such as Ben Lomond — ‘Glasgow’s mountain’ — and the Cobbler, with a magnificent crown of rock on its summit. The Trossachs have been described as ‘the Highlands in miniature’, a compact and picturesque cluster of hills, lochs and pine forests. A network of water buses links points across Loch Lomond and Loch Katrine, providing a convenient way to explore the park by joining up foot and bike trails.
The mountain that gives the Snowdonia National Park its name is its star attraction. Wales’s highest mountain — Yr Wyddfa in Welsh — is a complex massif of bristling ridges and pyramid-shaped summits, inhabited by agile mountain goats and the elusive Snowdon beetle. With almost half a million visitors a year, Snowdon ranks as one of the busiest mountains in the world, but hikers also flock to the Glyderau, with its pulse-racing scrambles, and the awesome Cader Idris. Legend holds that if you sleep on the slopes of the latter, you will die, go insane or turn into a poet. Numerous attractions such as surf parks, zip wires and underground adventures pull in thrill-seekers from far and wide.
Endless seas of bright-purple moorland, steam trains puffing through sinuous valleys, sun-dappled waterfalls in lush woodland, the smell of fish and chips wafting through fishing villages in coastal coves…the North York Moors National Park has a timeless and idyllic feel, particularly in summer, with its retro-seeming villages and heritage railways — famously used as filming locations for Heartbeat and Harry Potter — evoking the atmosphere of a bygone era. Walking, cycling and sightseeing are the order of the day here, either in the valleys and moorland of the National Park’s interior or on its spectacular coastline — a sweep of high cliffs, hidden coves and rocky beaches, some of which are studded with Jurassic fossils and dinosaur footprints.
The South Downs National Park is the UK’s youngest, created in 2010. As well as incorporating the rolling chalk hills and white coastal cliffs of the South Downs themselves, it includes the wooded patchwork of the western Weald. Lying between London and the south coast, this is no remote wilderness, but walking through the landscape of gentle hills, ancient woods, sunken lanes and vineyards (vine-growing in this part of England dates back to at least Norman times) is a much-needed antidote to city stresses. This is also the easiest National Park to explore by public transport; the whole South Downs Way can be split into sections and accessed by bus and train.
The Peak District is really two landscapes in one: the high moorland and Millstone Grit escarpments of the Dark Peak and the sleepy villages and lush limestone gorges of the White Peak. Its location at the heart of industrial England ensured that it was the crucible of the ‘right to roam’ movement. For workers from Manchester, the Potteries or the steel cities and wool towns of Yorkshire, the big boggy moors, peaceful valleys and climbing crags were the closest source of natural beauty and adventure. It is fitting that, in 1951, it became the first region in the UK to be granted National Park status. Today, around 20 million people live within an hour’s drive.
Pastel-coloured fishing villages hunkered in turquoise bays; long lines of surf rolling up to broad, white beaches; rugged cliffs, sea stacks, rock arches, bird colonies… This is the only UK National Park created primarily for the beauty of its coast — a spectacular Atlantic-battered shoreline. It is an exhilarating place to hike, surf, climb, go coasteering or ride out on a boat trip to the offshore islands and spot puffins, dolphins and seals. The hills and headlands are also dotted with stunning Neolithic burial chambers such as Pentre Ifan, Carreg Samson and Carreg Coetan Arthur, with huge slabs of rock balanced on top of each other at extraordinary angles.
All of the UK’s National Parks are shaped by the hand of humanity in some way, but few as fundamentally as this one: the collection of lakes known as the Broads was formed by medieval peat diggings, later flooded as sea levels rose. Today, it is a labyrinth of over 200km of navigable waterways, criss-crossing a sleepy landscape dotted with picturesque pubs and villages — an idyllic water world to explore by boat. A vibrant wetland habitat, the park is home to a quarter of the UK’s rarest wildlife species. Otters dive around the riverbanks, the surreal boom of bitterns reverberates for miles and vast flocks of birds soar over the marshes.
Stamp set AS6700 £8.50
Lunar New Year of the Ox Generic Sheet with 20 First Class Smilers stamps featuring fireworks images. [Larger version below]
