Thornton Education Trust, London (2026)

04/08/2026

We’re on a search for the BEST OF UNIVERSITY & SCHOOL DEPARTMENTS📣

Last year, UCL's Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment placed young people at the heart of their initiative, recognizing the geographical and financial barriers to young people engaging with the built environment industry. Delivering 79 outreach events, they reached over 3000 young people across the UK.

The impact of this work is clear:
🧠95% of participants reported an increased understanding of built-environment careers
🏙️226 students attended multiple events and repeatedly engaged with the process
🧑‍🎓130 scholars awarded funding by Bartlett scholarships in the past 5 five

If you’re a part of a design studio, research project, community partnership, knowledge exchange programme or showcasing participation-led teaching, then we want to know about it!

Become celebrated leaders in your field – enter now at https://www.thorntoneducationtrust.org/ifgawards-2026 🔗

29/07/2026

We’re on a search for the BEST OF LOCAL AUTHORITY 📣

The best of hashtag awards recognise local authorities that are actively developing their approach to involving children and young people in shaping places, projects, and decisions. We’re celebrating your commitment, progress, learning, and ambition in built environment practices.

Last year, the London Borough of Camden placed young people at the heart of the Camley Street regeneration programme. Through co-design workshops, creative programmes, cultural events and initiatives including Community Storytellers and Young Researchers in Residence, young people have helped shape the future of their neighbourhood.

The impact includes:
✨ Young people directly informed the Camley Street Vision, masterplan, and design proposals
🏙️ Young people helped select development partners
🌱 Stronger trust and sustained relationships with young residents over a five-year period, with young people returning to steering groups and new young members joining

If your organisation is developing new approaches or creating meaningful opportunities for children and young people to influence policy, planning, projects, and places, then you might be our next best local authority winners!

Become celebrated leaders in your field – enter now at https://www.thorntoneducationtrust.org/ifgawards-2026 👈🔗

28/07/2026

We’re on a search for the BEST OF BUILT ENVIRONMENT PRACTICE 📣

The Best of recognise organisations that are actively developing their approach to involving children and young people in shaping places, projects, and decisions.

Whether participation is embedded across your practice or emerging through recent projects, we're celebrating your commitment, progress, learning, and ambition in built environment practice.

NOOMA Studio puts people at the heart of its approach, with the belief that young people deserve not only to inhabit the city but to shape it – and that’s why they were our 2025 winners. 🏆

Through co-design, mentoring, and creative engagement, the practice has approached youth participation with a range of projects . From Play Cycles for the Museum of London, where young Londoners aged 12–16 re-imagined play in public space, to projects in Southwark and Camden, young people have helped shape everything from public art and paving patterns to cultural programmes and community spaces.

The impact includes:
✨ More than 3,000 children and young people were directly engaged with design
🎭 Young people gained confidence and experience through design, performance, storytelling, making, and creative collaboration
🤝 Clients and partners adopted youth engagement approaches, with the Museum of London continuing Play Cycles as a permanent outreach programme

If your practice is embedding youth participation, developing new engagement approaches, testing innovative methods, or creating meaningful opportunities for children and young people to influence design we want to celebrate it.

Become celebrated leaders in your field by entering now at: https://www.thorntoneducationtrust.org/ifgawards-2026🔗

22/07/2026

Big ideas start with bold visions. Is your project helping to shape a more sustainable, inclusive, and inspiring future for our places?

🏆 Category: Strategic Vision

For , we're celebrating projects where children and young people contribute to long-term thinking, planning, and decision-making about places.

Last year's winner, Forest of Imagination by Bath Spa University and partners, transformed Bath's former Entry Hill golf course into a trail of art and nature installations, inviting people to reimagine a forgotten landscape.

The project:
🎨 Connected children, young people, and communities with nature through immersive creative experiences
🌱 improved long-term wellbeing, with improved mental health and enhanced educational outcomes and career pathways
🌍 Demonstrated how temporary interventions can inspire long-term change

If your project is setting a bold direction for the future of places, we want to hear about it.

🔗 Follow the link https://www.thorntoneducationtrust.org/ifgawards-2026 to enter now and showcase your impact.

21/07/2026

🏆 Category: Skills Development

The next generation isn't just the future of the built environment - they're already helping to shape it.
Could your project be giving young people the skills, confidence, and opportunities to make a real impact? 🌍

is celebrating initiatives help children and young people build confidence, knowledge, and transferable skills through meaningful involvement in the built environment.

Last year's winner, Placed, is breaking down barriers to careers in the built environment through a free, long-term programme for young people aged 11–26. By combining hands-on design learning with live projects with industry partners, participants gain the skills to influence the places where they live.

Their impact speaks for itself:
✨ 95% of participants reported increased confidence in sharing ideas and contributing to design discussions
🏙️ 92% gained new knowledge of careers in the built environment
🤝 88% developed teamwork, communication, and presentation skills
From helping shape Liverpool's emerging Local Plan to reimagining the future of the city's waterfront, young people's ideas are making a real difference.

If your initiative develops skills through design challenges, place-based learning, mentoring, youth leadership, or participatory projects, we want to hear about it!

Drop a comment below and follow the link https://www.thorntoneducationtrust.org/ifgawards-2026 showcase your impact. 🔗

16/07/2026

What makes a built environment project truly memorable?

It's rarely just the final outcome. More often, it's the teacher who sparks curiosity, the partnership that brings learning to life, or the project that helps young people see their community in a new way.

That's why the Imagine Awards 2026 celebrate more than great projects- we celebrate the people and collaborations behind them.

This year our special recognitions are:

🏆 Teacher of the Year – celebrating educators whose creativity, commitment and leadership inspire children and young people through built environment learning.
🏛️ The Christina Smith Award – recognising projects that connect heritage, place and contemporary design, helping young people understand how the past can shape the future.
🤝 Built Environment Professionals & Not-for-Profit Organisations – celebrating meaningful collaborations that embed built environment learning within the school curriculum.
✨ The Collaboration Award – awarded to the most outstanding partnership across our primary and secondary categories, recognising the power of schools and professionals working together.

If you've helped children see, question and shape the places around them, we'd love to hear your story.

Entries and nominations for the Imagine Awards 2026 are open now. https://www.thorntoneducationtrust.org/imagineawards-2026-revised

15/07/2026

What does it really mean to safeguard our heritage for future generations?

It's about more than preserving buildings, collections or stories. It's about ensuring the next generation has the opportunity to shape how heritage is shared.

Projects like Hope Streets by Curious Minds show what's possible when young people are seen not just as audiences, but as partners. Through the Kick the Dust programme by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, they worked alongside heritage organisations, artists and communities to uncover local stories and create their own Festivals of Hope - bringing fresh perspectives to the places they call home.

The impact speaks for itself:
🤝 260% increase in youth participation roles
👥 300% increase in trustees under 25
👷‍♂️ 133% increase in trainees, interns and apprentices under 25

These results remind us that when we invest in young people as leaders and decision-makers, we strengthen not only individual organisations but the future of the heritage sector itself.

That's why we're so excited to launch the new Heritage category for the Inspire Future Generations Awards 2026. While Kick the Dust concluded in 2023, its legacy lives on through the next generation of place-makers, storytellers and heritage champions.

We're looking for projects that empower children and young people through heritage, conservation, local history, museums, archives and heritage-led placemaking.
👉 If your project is making a difference, secure your chance to be our first ever winners in the heritage sector and enter the Inspire Future Generations Awards 2026: https://www.thorntoneducationtrust.org/ifgawards-2026👈

Know a project or individual that deserves recognition? Tag them below and help us celebrate the organisations inspiring future generations. 👇

Learn more about how Hope Streets adapted heritage to survive for future generations here: https://www.heritagefund.org.uk/blogs/hope-streets-moving-heritage-festival-online

14/07/2026

Making change isn't just about ideas - sometimes it's about evidence and action too.

🏆 Material Resources & Research

The hashtag are celebrating projects creating knowledge, tools and evidence that improve built environment practice.

Last year’s winner, Dinah Bornat of ZCD Architects, was recognised for All to Play For: How to Design Child Friendly Housing. An evidence-led book using a decade of research and European case studies, it shows how designing with children’s needs in mind leads to healthier, more resilient and socially connected communities.

The book is already influencing policy, featuring in 📍 the House of Commons Reading List for their Select Committee Inquiry Research Briefing, and referenced by 📍 Islington Council’s Children & Young People Scrutiny Committee report.

Thank you, Dinah, for championing children and young people’s voices in housing and placemaking. 🙌

Creating research or resources that help shape more inclusive places? We’d love to hear from you. Follow the link https://www.thorntoneducationtrust.org/ifgawards-2026 to enter the hashtag and showcase your impact.

Find the book here: https://www.ribabooks.com/all-to-play-for-how-to-design-child-friendly-housing_9781915722300

14/07/2026

✨🏆 NEW Category for 2026: Heritage🏆✨

We're excited to introduce Heritage as a brand-new category for ! If your project empowers children and young people to discover, interpret and celebrate the places and stories around them, this could be the perfect category for you.

A great example of this kind of work is Kick the Dust from 2017-2023, a National Lottery Heritage Fund programme that invested in projects helping young people reconnect with heritage in meaningful ways. Designed by young people themselves, the programme encouraged participants to explore local history, work with heritage organisations and challenge traditional narratives, proving that heritage is something to be experienced, shaped and shared—not simply preserved.

The fund:
🤝 Supported 12 projects across the UK
🗣️ Increased youth involvement in heritage decision-making
👷‍♂️ Created a stronger youth-focused workforce across participating heritage organisations

📍 As our first-ever Heritage category, we're looking to celebrate projects that help the next generation shape how our shared heritage is understood, protected and experienced.

Think your project belongs in our inaugural Heritage category? Follow the link https://lnkd.in/ep_KCxmT to enter and showcase your impact.

09/07/2026

📐 Design, Making & Creative Learning

How are children building creativity, problem-solving and practical skills through design and hands-on making?

From architecture to education and the built environment, the is showcasing work that helps young people design, test and develop their ideas in meaningful ways.

Open to primary and secondary educators 🙌

Submit via https://www.thorntoneducationtrust.org/imagineawards-2026-revised and showcase your involvement with the next generation of designers and makers.

✨ Don’t forget to recognise the inspiring educators who make this happen before they head off on their holidays - nominate for Teacher of the Year and tag them below 👇✨

Keep your eyes on this page for more information, inspiration and to see some of last year’s winners! You don’t want to miss it.

Thornton Education Trust

04/08/2026

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28/07/2026

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16/07/2026

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09/07/2026

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