Announcing the 2021 Green Gown Award Winners

18th November 2021

Green Gown Awards inspiring and empowering our young people to visualise a better sustainable future

Announcing the Green Gown Award Winners and Highly Commended Entries

The Green Gown Awards UK & Ireland’s virtual Awards Ceremony celebrated the inspirational work and projects of 90 Finalists in 14 different categories. This year’s Finalists represented over 862,000 students and 156,000 staff.

Hosted by Serena Bashal, COP Working Group, UK Youth Climate Coalition and Xan Northcott Coordinator of the Generation Global education programme at the Institute for Global Change, and guest presenters, 18 Winners, 18 Highly Commended and all Finalists were celebrated.

Winning initiatives ranged from climate action projects such as the University of Edinburgh’s Positive Futures, addressing the climate crisis through a whole institution approach and Bridgend College’s “The spider’s web”, an extraordinary vision seeking out to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions wherever they hide creating a genuine movement for positive change.

Dumfries and Galloway College are connecting people to the issue of marine plastic and its consequences, creating beautiful artwork whilst Newcastle University and Cap-a-Pie’s inspiring Climate Change Catastrophe show, all about climate change, is made by kids, for grown-ups.

Impressive individual winners included Daniela Farina from the University of Exeter, a champion of lab sustainability and changing the impact of labs for the better to Lea Barbett, University of Derby, spotting a gap in the science of human behaviour relating to sustainability. 

Iain Patton, EAUC CEO and delivery partner of the Awards said:

“We need to ensure that we inspire and empower our young people to visualise a better future and to do all that we can to ensure that every career becomes a sustainable career. We need to turn feelings of anger and anxiety into hope and action. Education has a pivotal role to play. This is a decisive decade for our very own future and this year's Green Gown Award winners reflect the urgency and innovation identified at COP26.  Inspired by our winners, highly commended and all of our finalists means that we have no time to delay to replicate and scale their work in our own institution.”

Huge Congratulations to all of our Winners, Highly Commended Entries and Finalists!

Applications open on 1st April 2022. Get inspired to apply and see all of our winners here.