The Orwell Youth Prize 2022

This year, we want you to think and write critically and creatively about how the climate crisis affects the people, places, and things around you. How will our impact on the environment affect the places you know? What will the impact be on human beings around the world?

George Orwell was a political writer: he wrote movingly about the importance of our relationship with the natural world and the destruction of the environment. But he also paid close attention to social justice and the importance of language in shaping how we see the world.

Inspired by Orwell, we are also encouraging you to come up for air and look afresh at the way the climate crisis and the environment is discussed and reported today. How can we confront this crisis in a way which is fair to everyone? What difficult decisions might need to be made to help save the planet? What is missing from the conversation?

And if you had the power, what changes would you make?