IIW Annual Report 2025

IIW 2025 DIGITAL COLLECTION WELDED ART PHOTOGRAPHIC EXHIBITION: PROGRESSING BIODIVERSITY

Chris Smallbone Editor and Exhibition Coordinator IIW President 2005-2008 and IIW Fellow

The objective of the IIW 2025 Digital Collection Welded Art Photographic Exhibition: Progressing Biodiversity was to raise greater awareness to people worldwide and at all age levels, of the need to protect the world’s life supporting biodiversity. Biodiversity includes all the variety of life that can be found on earth such as fauna and flora (plants and animals) and their habitat, including soil, seedbanks and water. Biodiversity is under great threat globally, and its loss is often irreversible. People need to know this in order to do something to protect and restore it, and one way is through welded art. With its Technical Commissions and education, training, qualification and certification networks, IIW has a global influence in many areas. Young people are becoming more aware and active in the need to both protect and improve biodiversity and many of the technological outputs from the work of IIW’s members does have direct benefits on improving biodiversity. IIW has always sought to involve more young people through its activities such as its Young Professionals Programmes. This IIW initiative on welded art which started in 2019 at the IIW Annual Assembly in Bratislava, has had a positive effect with more and more schools, colleges and universities becoming involved in both their national welded art exhibitions and competitions as well as the IIW ones. We are proud that this IIW 2025 Digital Collection shows the excellent IIW ethos of cooperation and collaboration with over 40 artists from 11 countries contributing to creating greater awareness of the importance of the relationship of the global welding community to biodiversity. Participants from Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, England, India, Kazakhstan, Romania, Spain, Ukraine, USA and Wales included career artists, hobby artists, students at schools and colleges as well as from organisations such as IIW-India, Bulgarian Welding Society (BWS) and SkillsUSA. The latter for example, has been holding Welding Sculpture competitions since 2010 at local, State and national levels. Each artist or team, was given a “Certificate of Participation” in recognition of their tremendous contribution to the exhibition. Nine individuals and four organisations were each recognised with a “ Certificate of Participation for Inspiring Champions” for their work with people to improve their skills as well as motivating them to take up careers in the welding related fields. The IIW 2025 Digital Collection was available for download on the IIW website on 22nd June 2025 and we have received an incredible response from people congratulating us on the high quality of the artists and exhibits as well as the theme of progressing biodiversity. We encourage readers to pass on the link to friends and colleagues and wherever possible, promote or publicise it.

Discover the Exhibition, visit: https://iiwelding.org/iiw-welding-as-an-art/

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