The Imagine Awards celebrates teachers and built environment professionals who incorporate architecture and the wider built environment into the primary curriculum.

By showcasing innovative teaching methods, the Imagine Awards encourages more educators to use the built environment as a tool for learning.

By making a submission, you contribute to a growing resource bank that supports teachers and helps more children and young people explore and understand the built environment.

The awards are open to primary schools and teachers and built environment collaborators.

You can submit any past activities or lessons, and can submit multiple different times. You can also submit any current activities, projects or lessons that link the built environment to the primary curriculum. If your activity does not link directly to the curriculum we are still interested in learning about it and its impact on children and young people.

Each category has its own submission form, please fill in as much detail as possible but don’t worry if you are missing information, we would rather you submit what you can then not at all.

Applications are made online using a simple form on our website. We have condensed all the main steps into our ‘How to enter’ guide.

Applications need to be made through our website. Unfortunately, we cannot accept applications by any other method. If you have any problem accessing this platform, email us: imagineprogramme@thorntoneducationtrust.org

Please note that all applications must be written in English.

There are 10 categories, eight of these are to submit lessons and activities to and the other two are to nominate a teacher or collaborator of the year.

Each category has its own dedicated submission form. To access it, visit the page for the category you wish to enter and click the ‘Submit your entry ’ button to complete your application.

You can make as many submissions as you wish. These can be past projects, a one off activity, a series of lessons or long term engagement.

The Imagine Awards help us to gather examples and case studies of innovative teaching methods and collaborations that support the integration of the built environment into primary education. By making a submission you are helping us to achieve this.

The awards are free to submit for schools and teachers.

For collaborators there is a submission fee to help us cover some of the essential running costs associated with the awards and to make this possible for teachers to submit for free.

Submission fees are:

• £69.00 per entry for small not-for-profits

• £149.00 per entry for built environment companies, organisations and institutions.

There is no cost for nominating a teacher or collaborator of the year.

Impact – what is the overall impact of your project, what are the tangible benefits to children and young people, how have you been able to measure them, and if the project has met its objectives.

Insights – what this tells us about best practice. For instance, what are the best practices learned from the initiative, how is this being shared, how far-reaching is the scope of the initiative, what are the challenges that arose and how did you overcome them, lessons learned.

Metrics - How many children and young people has it engaged, did all stay the course of the projects, when did it begin?

Reflection - Self reflection (individual or organisation) - How has the experience by you or your team in engaging with young people influenced your/team’s own work/agency/lessons learnt?

We ask for a lead contact person who we will liaise with on all correspondence.

Yes! If you applied in one or more project categories in the past awards and are submitting as part of the Best of category, you can access a discount code:

• IFGA25BestofNotProfit2year - discount code for small not-for-profit organisations

• IFGA25BestofCompany2year - discount code for built environment companies, developers, local authorities, and institutions

Yes!

Each award category is open for sponsorship as well the IFG Awards Ceremony, the IFGA itself, a prize for the Individuals of the Year.

Download our Sponsorship package here.

We would be delighted to discuss opportunities. Please email us at inspireawards@thorntoneducationtrust.org for more details.

All Categories are open to International applicants except Climage Change category as this year there is a specific International Award for Climate Change as we wish to highlight this challenge.

All forms have a few short sections where relevant information is requested, plus the opportunity to upload no more than 6 sides of A4 which may include photos, press, stats, testimonials etc (max 20mb). Note that we ask for these informations not only in regards to the Awards but also to the development of the next Empowering Environments Report, a piece of research developed alongside and after the Awards.

If you are having difficulty uploading the images, try a few times as can be temperamental and if still a problem, please email inspireawards@thorntoneducationtrust.org

Please note you cannot change your application after it has been submitted.

TET retains the right to amend category entered where appropriate.

Please note: There is a save function on the form. A full copy of your application will be automatically emailed to you after submission.

Email Gaia at gaia.vignali@thorntoneducationtrsut.org

An independent panel of leaders in education and the built environment select the winners, after carefully reviewing all entries.

The judging panel for IFGA25 has been published here.

After closing the submission portal, by the end of October 2025, the panel of judges will gather to articulate the shortlist.

We will advise all shortlisted finalists in writing end of November, while the winners will be announced at the Awards Ceremony and Party in January 2026.

TET reserves the right to announce winners first, and the manner and details of announcing this is at our discretion. 

Unfortunately it may not be possible to correspond with unsuccessful applicants.

Fees can’t be refunded should you choose to withdraw.

TET reserves the right to publish and promote all content and imagery from submissions and you agree that relevant photography licences/permissions have been obtained. You agree that to the best of your knowledge we are free to use any images supplied to us, and grant TET permission to use these on our website and in any associated publicity without infringement of copyright. Credit line should be supplied.

We identified 6 types of engagement:

• Programme: long term, sustained, and comprehensive engagement

• Project: short term, focused engagement

• Workshop: interactive learning experiences that produce creativity and skill development

• Event: platforms that encourage broader engagement and community involvement

• Discussion and lectures: opportunities for knowledge exchange and fostering critical thinking

• Data collection and research: efforts to contribute to evidence-based practices, enhancing understanding of the needs and perspectives of children and young people

This information is useful to understand more deeply the type of engagement your project has been developming. Moreover, this help us in the design of the Empowering Environment. A report that TET develops immediately after the IFGA to understand, year by year, how this form of engagement is changing across the years. To know more about the last Report visit our Store.

Each year winners are invited to present their work through a series of online presentations and are considered as potential panelists for our quarterly TET Dialogue events.  Winning award entries are also added to the TET Resource Bank and featured in our annual Empowering Environment Report.