For the second year, Americans for the Arts is parntering with Vans for their fifth annual Vans Custom Culture - an art and design competition to celebrate student creativity and support arts education. Starting yesterday, January 6, high school art teachers can register for their students to vie against schools across the country to create the most artistic designs using blank Vans shoes as a canvas. The winning school will receive a $50,000 donation for their school art program, and one of the shoe designs will be put into production for sale in select Vans retail stores. Vans will also donate $50,000 to Americans for the Arts to continue their work advancing arts education throughout the United States.

Vans Custom Culture was created to inspire and empower high school students to embrace their creativity through art and design, and call attention to the fact that school art programs are suffering due to diminishing education budgets. Since its inception in 2010 with 326 participating schools, the contest has grown to almost 2,000 schools expected to participate this year. To date, Vans Custom Culture has reached hundreds of thousands of students and put more than $290,000 back into high school art programs.

Beginning today through Feb. 14 at 12:00 noon PST, high school art teachers can register their students for the 2014 competition on the Vans Custom Culture website (registration will be capped at 2,000 schools). Students will be tasked with designing four pairs of blank Vans shoes each to depict one of four themes representing the Vans “Off the Wall” lifestyle: action sports, art, music, and local flavor. Vans employees pick the top 50 schools to be semi-finalists, the public votes on the semi-finalist school's deisgns between April 25 and May 12, and then the top five finalist schools will travel to New York City to showcase their designs for celebrity judges and the chance to win $50,000. Vans will also donate $4,000 to each of the four runner-up schools.

For information and registration guidelines visit the Custom Culture website at vans.com/customculture.