2025 Winners and Shortlist
Listen to the shortlisted songs and find out more about the artists below.
WINNERS
Josephine Illingworth
Josephine Illingworth-Law (2001) is a 23-year-old artist from London, UK. Through sound, she investigates places where the human and non-human are entwined with unusual complexity, documenting what a refugee community, a mountain village, or her own family can sound like. With an ethnographic approach and a hunger for travel and exploration, she collects field recordings, photographs, poetry, and writings from these places, which in turn form her telling of the story she finds.
Wildforms
In the flurry of organic and synthetic sounds dwells Wildforms, the electronic music apparition of musician Dan Cippico. Murmurations of lush nature recordings fuse with organic percussion and electronic production to make up the signature Wildforms sound.
Shortlist
Anna Hughes
Anna is a Newcastle-based musician/composer. Notable collaborations include her work with alt-folk trio Salt House and duo watersmeet. Her latest project (developed as Artist in Residence at The Glasshouse ICM) searches for connection between the human and non-human world.
Photo by Marie Harkness
CharlesCantBreathe
CHARLESCANTBREATHE is a musical project created by singer-songwriter Charlie Raphael-Campbell. Combining elements of folk, funk, rock, blues, and grunge, this musical project is incredibly eclectic and portrays the many different sounds, emotions, and experiences of life.
Ciaran Austin ft. Tori Tsui
Ciaran Austin is a Bristol-based songwriter & artist who creates alternative hip-hop / R&B / spoken word. His songs, which blend emotive lyricism with mellow, lo-fi production, explore themes of mental health & self-expression, nature, relationships and identity and have been featured on BBC 6 Music & BBC introducing.
Floating Temples
Over the last five years, I have been writing and recording pieces of instrumental acoustic music that reflect my passion for nature and the outdoors.
Humm
'Humm' are a contemporary folk duo, experimenting with a variety of genres, themes and naturalistic lyrics through the form of two ethereal vocals, mesmerising guitar lines and rich harmonium drones. Uniting fellow nature-lovers with their inner activists through music.
Imo Solar
imo solar (she/they) is a queer musician, songwriter and writer born in Aotearoa and living in London. she is the founder of Club Sol, a collective connecting people to planet through creativity.
LaurenKB
Lauren Kara is a singer, poet and multi-instrumentalist. Self-love, wellbeing and nature are at the root of her lyrical inspiration. Lauren is passionate about using her creative gifts for good, to help change the world and others lives!
Lizzie Esau
Lizzie Esau (pronounced EESaw) has been captivating audiences with performances at Big Weekend, Boardmasters, and Glastonbury in 2024. Named BBC Introducing’s One to Watch and amassing over 2 million streams, she is building a fanbase through her storytelling and shining a light on issues that need to be addressed.
Photo: Narc Magazine & Amelia Read
Rebecca Spooner
Rebecca is a 19-year-old singer-songwriter from West Yorkshire, and a rising local artist in Calderdale, playing gigs, festivals and open mics with just me, my guitar and my original songs, as well as self-producing my own material in my dinky little bedroom studio!