2025's winning projects

Discover six spectacular projects which blew away the judges of our 2025 Igniting Innovation conservation challenge!

Igniting Innovation invites passionate young people aged 16–25 to pitch their big ideas to boost the health of our planet. With a record number of applicants this year, our finalists had truly exceptional projects to share.

Designed with the health of people and nature at their core, each of the winning projects is set to make a real impact. After hearing each winner's final pitch at an exciting gathering in London in May 2025, our judges decided how to share the prize pot of £20,000.

Below we share details of our new winners, their incredible projects and the amount of funding we awarded.

This project was made possible thanks to our partnership with TK Maxx and Homesense.

Meet the winners

Discover the brilliant young minds behind the six winning projects of our Igniting Innovation challenge 2025.

Grace Rawlinson

Awarded £6,000
Project: Folk & Flora seeks to unite craft, community and conservation. Through craft kits and online workshops, participants build botanically accurate paper recreations of woodland plants, designed to help people recognise the real thing in the wild. Each kit weaves together botanical science, paper engineering, folklore and floriography. By combining precision, storytelling and hands-on learning, Folk & Flora is a unique and creative way to protect and celebrate woodland biodiversity. 

Heather Skyes

Awarded £4,000
Project: The Mole and Mother Ash is a children's picture book that tells the story of a woodland facing ash dieback and highlights the importance of all parts of the woodland's ecosystem. The book's aim is to teach both young children and their families about the ecological threat of ash dieback, and inspire a young passion for protecting the environment. With her background in creative writing and illustration, Heather will use her understanding of storytelling for children to create an accessible and engaging picture book. Pairing a narrative story alongside guidance pages that outline how we can help, the book will hopefully reduce the detrimental impact the disease could have on UK ash trees.

Sas Craft-Stanley and Rohanna Trim 

Awarded £3,000
Project: HollowSpace is a travelling micro-museum and pop-up performance space designed to reconnect urban youth with ancient woodland. This project brings the forest to the city through immersive habitat education in a micro-museum, then takes people out to the woods where the museum unfolds as a stage for intimate gigs and performances. By blending culture, ecology and creativity, HollowSpace breaks down barriers to nature access and rebuilds a sense of belonging in our oldest ecosystems. As cultural ties to woodlands fade, HollowSpace is planting new ones—rooted in experience, expression and connection.

Jamie Hewetson

Awarded £3,000
Project: MycoStrike is a card game which aims to showcase how much variety there is in the fungal kingdom. Through hand-painted illustrations, each card introduces players to the different features of fungi, equipping them with the knowledge to continue exploring outdoors. While aimed at motivating young people to delve into the weird world of fungi, MycoStrike is for everyone, regardless of their knowledge level or age.

Hanna Leach

Awarded £2,000
Project: 'Designing your own woodland' is a short documentary that will follow a landowner’s journey as they create their own woodland in the Northern Forest: picking out their trees, designing an ecosystem and planting the final product. Through this film, Hanna wants to encourage landowners such as farmers to take part in the Woodland Trust's goal to plant 50 million trees in the Northern Forest through initiatives like MOREwoods, that can cover up to 100% of the planting costs.

Laurie Hutton & Jamie March

Awarded £2,000
Project: BranchOut is an online resource hub for people to find ways to connect with nature in the workplace. The project aims to improve mental health in the workplace while also creating green spaces that encourage biodiversity and habitat corridors. By creating a range of different toolkits, Laurie and Jamie want to inspire every corner of the working landscape, from businesses and corporate offices to grassroots and local pop-ups. They hope to combat climate anxiety and prove to people that they don’t have to give up their career aspirations in order to fight for nature.