Powerful street art unveiled across UK highlighting species loss and climate change ahead of COP26

Wherever you live in Great Britain, you are surrounded by different habitats from ancient forests to wetlands, bogs and human-made canals. Each one supports a diversity of locally important plants, animals and other living organisms. They sustain each other and humans are part of that ecosystem too - but many UK species and habitats are threatened by human activities, including climate change. They need our help now.

For this year's Grantham Climate Art Prize, we invited 12-25-year-olds to design a mural that sends a strong message about the habitats and living organisms under threat across the UK to let people know about the importance of biodiversity loss. We can now reveal the winners.

"This year’s Grantham Climate Art Prize is really important. It is all about the links between biodiversity and climate change. We cannot fix one without fixing the other." - Dr Will Pearse, life scientist at the Grantham Institute, Imperial College London.

"I feel privileged to support a prize that enables young artists to communicate in public space their commitment, ideas and sense of urgency about the beauty to be found, and responsibility that comes with, actively being part of the fight for a thriving earth at home and beyond." - Helen Cammock, Grantham Climate Art Prize Patron and Winner of Turner Prize (2019) and Max Mara Art Prize for Women (2018)

 

Short film about the competition Play video
Short film about the competition

The winners

Seven murals have been unveiled in seven UK towns and cities depicting species under threat because of climate change and human activity. The murals have been designed by young people who took part in the Grantham Climate Art Prize 2021 ahead of the UN’s Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow.

The Grantham Climate Art Prize is organised by the Grantham Institute in partnership with pioneering energy company Octopus Energy and young campaigners UK Youth for Nature (UKY4N).

See the winning designs

Online exhibition

The 'Writing’s Not On the Wall – Yet' is an online exhibition hosted by the Stoke-on-Trent Museums featuring designs and street art created for the 2021 Grantham Climate Art Prize. Stoke-on-Trent Museums hope this exhibition prompts visitors to consider what extra actions they might take to benefit the environment, and join these young artists in standing up for humanity’s future on a habitable Earth. 

Visit the online exhibition. 

Tabs

Where can I see the murals
The murals are located in:
  • Brighton
  • Glasgow
  • East London
  • Leicester
  • Nottingham
  • Rochdale
  • Stoke-on-Trent

In addition, to these seven great locations, we have partnered with UK Youth for Nature's Wild Walls campaign to highlight a further seven brilliant, collaborative murals that celebrate local biodiversity. You can't submit your mural design for these locations, but you can follow their progress on UK Youth 4 Nature's Instagram page.

  • Aberystwyth
  • Belfast x2
  • Cardiff
  • Hulme, Manchester
  • Liverpool
  • Nottingham

A further mural will be painted by artist Bryony-Benge-Abbott in collaboration with school children in Twickenham, Sout-West London.