Seeds of Hope 2025: Schools helping a culture of peace to take root in the community

Seeds of Hope for a Better Future

The Seeds of Hope for a Better Future competition, which offers cash prizes to the winners, is part of the UNESCO UK Arts and Culture for Peace Initiative which was launched three years ago.

Schools can submit projects – completed, ongoing or planned – that are inspired by the values of peace, sustainability, community partnership and intercultural learning, to be part of a ground-breaking effort to give meaning to notions of global citizenship.

The winners will be selected by a distinguished panel of judges, including renowned sculptor Antony Gormley; the artist, potter and author Edmund de Waal; Niamh Dowling, Joy Gregory fine artist and photographer; Mariella Reina Head of Marketing and Communications at Wakehurst and Rathna Ramanathan, the Pro Vice Chancellor of Central St Martins, University of the Arts London.

The organisers are calling for inspiring school projects in four categories:

• Art works - in a gallery exhibition or community setting
• Illustrated poems/short stories - presented at local festivals or circulated via print media
• Digital illustrations - using photography, film or animation on social and public media
• Performance and/or installation art - inspired by drama, dance, music, art and sculpture.

Schools can do Seeds of Hope projects at any time, but the closing date for entries to the competition is 14 July. The prize fund of £5,000 is supported by The Hochhauser Foundation, in honour of the late Graham Merchant OBE.

The competition, which is organised under the umbrella of the UNESCO ASPnet Arts & Culture for Peace programme, connects more than 12,000 educational institutions in around180 countries and brings together schools for all ages and at all levels.

The competition encourages schools to work with partners including community groups, and arts and scientific organisations, such as international seed banks. One such partner is Kew Millennium Seed Bank, which is offering a package of public resources to support participating schools.

The aim is for young people worldwide to share compelling stories and create global Seeds of Hope pathways to highlight the impact of climate change. The 2025 competition is part of a visionary programme to develop a global map demonstrating how young voices all over the world are taking up the issues of peace, artistic endeavour and climate change and the impact they are having on local communities.

Seeds of Hope, inspired by Between the Stones

The UNESCO UK Associated Schools Programme Network (ASPnet) Arts and Culture for Peace Initiative and the Seeds of Hope project were inspired by Between the Stones, a UK-Japan art, drama and music project, and pilot projects by five primary schools in Coventry who worked with others to create the Coventry Young Ambassadors Islands of Peace Japanese Garden.

This garden, which has flourished ever since, was opened to the public by the Japanese Ambassador to the UK and the Mayor of Coventry in 2021. The garden is located in Coventry War Memorial Park, is open all year round, and is free.

The Coventry initiative inspired UNESCO in the UK to focus on the idea of seeds as an inspiration for educators and artists, who could cultivate and amplify the voices of young people worldwide to increase awareness of climate change and creatively inspire and engage the public at large.

As a result, the UNESCO UK Arts and Culture for Peace Initiative launched globally in 2022. A year later, in September 2023, a delegation from nine countries including the UK visited Japan to participate in Arts and Culture for Peace projects in celebration of UNESCO’s 70th anniversary.

In the latest competition young people from around the world are encouraged to research seeds of their choice from the themes identified, which will inspire them to create and illustrate their own seed story or other artwork.

Through this research they will discover a Seeds of Hope story: what a seed is, its value to the world and how it provides food security, biodiversity, sustainable development and other benefits. They will also understand its geographical origins, and whether it is rare or common in how it relates to the community at large. They will importantly understand better the likely impact of climate change on the seeds.

The creation of Seeds of Hope stories can involve a range of artistic expressions and will aim to illustrate, through sharing seed awareness, the need for humanity to play a responsible role in securing and maintaining a bio-diverse future for the planet. All artwork making a positive contribution to the project’s mission will be shared via the UNESCO ASPnet National Coordinators.

Ann Beatty, UNESCO ASPnet UK National Coordinator, said “UNESCO ASPNet UK is delighted to be supporting this amazing initiative in collaboration with our international partners. We are greatly encouraged by the number of schools and countries who have expressed interest in participating in the Seeds of Hope project.”

Jannette Cheong, author of Between the Stones, the musical and classical art project which helped inspire Seeds of Hope, hopes that schools from the UK and internationally will join this year’s competition as an adviser. "The UNESCO ASPnet Action areas are vital, interrelated and urgent for everybody,” she said. “Without peace we cannot achieve sustainability, and without having a tolerant relationship between cultures we will not have peace. Without peace, all of our human rights are at risk. Art has the potential to provide a creative mirror through which we can reflect on our impact on society.”

Further information on the Seeds of Hope Project including competition Entry Forms