Grantham Art Prize

Artistic mural showing a butterfly with the words

“Art has the potential to inspire minds and touch emotions in a way that science alone often finds challenging.” - Martin Siegert, Visiting Professor at the Grantham Institute

Grantham Climate Art Prize 2023

The Grantham Institute - Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial College London is running it’s biennial project, the 2023 Grantham Climate Art Prize, with sponsorship from Octopus Energy. The prize invites young people, who will be most affected by climate change, to create bold designs for outdoor public murals focused on the solutions needed to tackle the climate crisis.

Three winning designs will become public murals across the UK, painted by professional artists, and they and six runner-up designs will be displayed on billboards in London ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28), starting in November 2023. Winners will each receive £500 and runners-up will get £250 each. The judging panel will be made up of representatives from the Grantham Institute, Octopus Energy and the Turner Contemporary.  

Palette for the Planet: a greener, cleaner, cooler, future

The 2023 art prize theme will be climate action to ensure a more sustainable future world. It will use the Institute’s Climate Action hub, including our popular 9 things you can do about climate change, as inspiration for positive actions we can all take to reduce our impact on the planet, including reducing energy use and bills, green travel, protecting nature and eating less meat and dairy. We will be inviting young people age 11 – 25 to interpret these themes and focus on at least one of them when depicting their visions of a greener, cleaner, cooler future world.

All artforms are welcoming including painting, drawings, graphics, photomontage, collage, typography – except artwork generated by AI. Entries opened on 25 May through Octopus Energy’s website. The closing date is 15 September.

For more information, download our factsheet (PDF).

There will be workshops taking place during the summer months, including Design a Climate Action Mural at Imperial’s Great Exhibition Road Festival on Saturday 17 and Sunday 18 June. At the workshops young people will have a chance to hear from climate scientists about how individuals, businesses and governments can effectively tackle the climate crisis; and from mural artists on how to best convey visions for a more sustainable future on a large-scale designs that will successfully draw the attention of passers-by through vivid colours and eye-catching lettering.

Get involved

Enter now!

Watch this space for more updates, and if you have any more questions about the art prize, please contact: granthamartprize@imperial.ac.uk

Previous competitions

A railway arch painted with a colourful artwork with the words

Grantham Art Prize 2021

In 2021, the Grantham Art Prize resulted in powerful street art unveiled across UK: eight murals, designed by young people from diverse communities and painted by professional artists, were installed across UK cities ahead of the UN Climate Conference COP26. The murals highlighted biodiversity loss resulting from climate change. Photographs of them were exhibited in some of the Natural History Museum’s Real World Science museums; on billboards across London by our partner organisation that year, Octopus Energy; in a digital display at COP26 in Glasgow; and in regional and national media.
Piece of artwork from the Grantham Art Prize - lots of wooden flowers suspended on strings with their shadows playing on the backdrop

Grantham Art Prize 2018

In 2018, The Grantham Art Prize, ran in conjunction with the Royal College of Art (RCA), was launched as part of the Grantham Institute's 10th Anniversary celebrations. The competition was designed to create a conversation about climate change in a visual way, and to kick start collaborations between Imperial College London and students from other universities. The competition culminated in an art exhibition at Imperial College London that ran from 25-28 April 2019, and an exhibition at the Dyson Gallery from 20-30 August 2019.