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Lush Spring Prize

Zicä Pires Silva - founder of AAQ Agentes Agroflorestais Quilombolas, Brazil
Zicä Pires Silva - founder of 2018 winners AAQ Agentes Agroflorestais Quilombolas, Brazil.

The Lush Spring Prize comprises of a biennial £200,000+ prize fund and other support activities, to build capacity for those repairing the earth’s damaged systems.

It is for groups, organisations, enterprises or networks that are working to revive damaged social and natural environments, and who want to share what they are doing to inspire and inform others. This process of reviving or healing is often referred to as regeneration.

What does the Lush Spring Prize have to do with regeneration?

People all over the world are developing ways to live in harmony with nature and each other. They are generating renewable resources, restoring ecosystems, nurturing solidarity and building health, wholeness and resilience. They are bringing life back to damaged land and oceans.

The Lush Spring Prize is here to support these regeneration movements.

Regeneration can mean a lot of different things to different people. By regeneration we mean systems and practices that take a ‘holistic’ approach to solving environmental, social and economic problems; aiming to restore health, wholeness and resilience.

The Lush Spring Prize looks for projects that are actively contributing to the health of all the systems they are part of.

As well as helping to restore the natural systems in the place the project is based, projects should be nurturing the wellbeing of all their workers, the capacity of the community around them, and the networks they are connected to.

The Lush Spring Prize seeks projects that are aware of the challenges they face, that are building the capacity of their own organisation to address these challenges, improve and evolve.

Finally, projects should be sharing their experience so that others can learn from their work, adapt the knowledge to their own situations in doing so, support the wider regenerative movement.

Launch of Lush Spring Prize 2023

LUSH Spring Prize 2023 opens for applications

From 1st August 2022  – 19th  September 2022, regenerative organisations, community groups, businesses and other projects from around the world can apply to the LUSH Spring Prize 2023. 

Application forms are available to download from the Lush Spring Prize website and entries close at 10:00 GMT 19th September 2022.

The work and stories of shortlisted projects will be published on the Spring Prize website and prize recipients will be invited to a celebratory co-learning event taking place in May 2023.

The Lush Spring Prize supports regeneration movements through:

  • A biennial £200,000+ prize fund. This is open to communities, organisations and businesses from the Intentional stage, through to Young and Established organisations, and Influencers. 
  • Events that bring people together to share their skills and experience.
  • Publicity to raise awareness of regeneration and its potential to heal damaged systems.

2023 Prize categories

The 2023 Lush Spring Prize will award at least 11 prizes across 4 different Spring Prize categories, plus two additional collaborative prizes:

  • Intentional award
  • Young award
  • Established award
  • Influence award
  • Ancient and Indigenous Wisdom Award (collaborative) (Run in partnership with Be The Earth Foundation)
  • Permaculture Magazine Award (collaborative) (Run in partnership with Permaculture Magazine)

The Ancient and Indigenous Wisdom Award and the Permaculture Magazine Award are separately funded and have their own judging panel. For each of these two awards, prize recipients share a prize fund of at least £10,000.

Enter to be on the panel of judges

Each prize year, the Spring Prize team welcomes one Lush customer and one Lush staff member onto the Spring Prize judging panel. These people will work with the other Spring Prize judges (who collectively  represent different regenerative movements) to choose prize recipients from a shortlist of around 50 Spring Prize applications.

Customers and staff can apply to join the judging panel using the online form, between the 1st and 22nd of August.

What is regeneration?

What is the LUSH Spring Prize?

Launched in 2017, the Lush Spring Prize celebrates groups working toward eco-social regeneration. It is a joint venture between LUSH Cosmetics and Ethical Consumer, and has distributed more than £820,000 to date.

It was set up to support ‘regenerative’ projects – those that go beyond sustainability by taking holistic approaches to building the health of ecology, economy and social systems.

By supporting regenerative projects, the Spring Prize hopes to raise the profile of the movement as a whole to inspire more individuals, groups, communities, funders and businesses to start engaging with regenerative processes.

People all over the world are developing and remembering ways to live in cooperation with nature and each other. They are resisting further damage, restoring ecosystems, generating renewable resources, nurturing solidarity and building health, wholeness and resilience.

The Lush Spring Prize supports and celebrates their work through:

  • A biennial £200,000+ prize fund. This is open to communities, organisations and businesses from the Intentional stage, through to Young and Established organisations, and Influencers.     
  • Events that bring people together to share their skills and experience.
  • Publicity to raise awareness of regeneration and its potential to heal damaged systems.

Previous Spring Prize winners are listed on the Spring Prize website alongside shortlisted projects. They demonstrate the variety of approaches that can be taken to create a more regenerative society, from restoring degraded landscapes to creating platforms that give a voice to marginalised communities.

The 2021 Spring Prize Awards

The 2021 LUSH Spring Prize received over 400 applications, which were shortlisted to a group of 54 in June and July. The prize saw a 61% increase in reach, with applications being submitted by inspiring projects spanning 81 different countries and every continent except Antarctica.

In October 2021, 20 prizes were awarded during a week long programme of online events, celebrating the work of regenerative practitioners all over the world.

You can watch the opening awards ceremony on YouTube on the Ethical Consumer channel.

The 2021 prizes were awarded across six categories:

It total more than £220,000 was invested in recognising regenerative work.

The 20 prize recipients of the 2021 LUSH Spring Prize can be found on the Spring Prize website.

Projects were driven by a range of stakeholders, including grassroots campaigners, small scale agro-ecological producers, regenerative businesses, Indigenous-led groups, academics, global solidarity networks and think tanks.

Their work addresses multiple issues needed to support life, including ecosystem restoration, regenerative food production, building communities, creating resilient housing and circular economies, whilst also supporting displaced people, protecting Indigenous rights and access to land.

Prize recipients are working around the world in a diverse range of fields including landscape restoration, food and farming, climate change mitigation and adaptation, Indigenous rights, and empowering women and other marginalised groups.

While projects may have different focuses, they all take holistic and regenerative approaches to solving the challenges they face, with many being led by members of the communities they are working in.

All projects designed and ran peer learning workshops as part of the week long online final event. You can watch sessions again in six different languages here.

Four people in garden
Education for Climate Action for Peace (E4CAP), winner of the Young Project

The 2021 event

As government officials began to gather in Glasgow for the 26th UN Climate Change Conference, the Spring Prize community gathered online to celebrate and highlight the important role that holistic, regenerative approaches must play when facing the complex challenges posed by the climate crisis.

To creatively respond to the travel restrictions and health risks of the pandemic, the Spring Prize 2021 event took place online for the first time, with local events being hosted in 16 countries by prize recipients.

The event was designed with the aim of providing awarded projects’ members with the opportunity to share their stories, expertise and ideas in an inclusive and collaborative environment.

You can watch the spring prize 2021 peer learning workshops again in six different languages here.

Open letter from Spring Prize community to COP26 and the world

Throughout the event participants shared messages and crafted an open letter from the Spring Prize community addressed to all those considering our future, at COP26 and beyond.

“We are writing to you from five different continents as those working to repair the earth’s damaged systems.

We ask you - as world leaders, as policy makers, as those concerned for our climate - to take heed of the work of regenerators from so many different movements: Indigenous land defenders, agrocologists, permaculture practitioners, natural builders, food sovereignty activists, and more”.

You can read the full open letter online, with personal quotes and messages.

Image of two women with the words Untelevised The Podcast

Podcasts by Untelevised

A partnership between Lush Spring Prize and Untelevised has led to a podcast series of interviews with Spring Prize judges, projects, shortlisted projects etc.

These podcasts are being broadcast from 17th November 2021 - find out more from their website and also the podcast link.

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