2025 Pride Art Contest: Joy Is Resistance — and We Want Your Art
WE WANT YOUR ART.
Each year, The Autonomy Project’s Pride merch carries more than just color and design — it carries our message. It holds space for the loud and the quiet, the joyful and the furious. It reminds people that they are not alone, even when the world tries to make them feel otherwise.
In 2025, as attacks on queer, trans, and marginalized lives continue to escalate, we’re answering back with beauty, resistance, and community care. We’re answering back with art — and we want yours.
Why This Contest Matters
Sure, our merch raises a bit of money — and yes, that money helps keep the lights on in our queer community space. But the truth is, merch is more than a fundraiser. It’s a beacon. A conversation starter. A moment of connection in a sea of noise.
When someone wears an Autonomy Project shirt or slaps a sticker on their laptop, they’re broadcasting a simple but radical message:
“I exist. I belong. I stand with my people.”
That’s why we do this contest every year — not to sell T-shirts, but to share stories. Stories in ink, stories in color, stories from the margins, the rooftops, the protest lines, and the quiet bedrooms where survival feels like a revolution.
Contest details
✏️ THEME:
Joy is Resistance — but your work can also reflect what matters to you.
Designs may be:
- Pro-queer, pro-trans, pro-sex work
- Centered in social justice, liberation, and mutual aid
- Funny, weird, radical, snarky, loud, soft, or spiritual
- Rooted in your lived experience
🎨 SUBMIT:
- T-shirt designs: 1–3 colors, vector preferred (.AI, .EPS, .SVG)
- Sticker designs: full color allowed, raster or vector (.PNG, .PSD also okay)
- Must include “Autonomy Project” in the design, but it can be small.
- Open to artists 21+ anywhere in the world
- Unlimited entries allowed
- Deadline: April 30, 2025
PRIZES
We believe in nurturing creativity and self expression in whatever ways we can. We've taken some of our programming budget to provide monetary prizes for our winners:
🏅
1st Place (T-shirt): $200
🥈
2nd Place (T-shirt): $100
🎖️
3rd & 4th (Stickers): $50 each
All winners also receive:
- Free merch with your design once it's printed
- Two free tickets to any Autonomy Project event (even the fancy ones)
- Recognition across our social platforms and online store
- Community bragging rights
Finalists will be featured and credited. Non-winning submissions may be considered for future use — always with your permission and credit.
What we're Looking for
We’re not interested in rainbow capitalism or stock illustrations of sanitized queerness. We want you — your rage, your tenderness, your humor, your roots, your vision for what this world could be if it actually made space for us.
This is a call to the misfits, the margin-walkers, the fringe dwellers. To the ones who design in their notes app, their sketchbook, their heartbreak. To queer elders and queer babies. To BIPOC artists, sex workers, neurodivergent dreamers, body-outlaw rebels, and everyone in between.
We want your truth in color.
Full deets and how to submit
Ready to make something bold and beautiful?
Tag your artist friends. Share this callout.
Let’s flood the world with queer joy — and prove that
art is still a weapon.
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KEEP THE LIGHT ON
When the world feels uncertain, safe spaces like The Autonomy Project become a beacon of hope. Your donation keeps our lights on—literally and figuratively—for those who need it most.
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