With submissions for our 2025 Annual Exhibition opening soon, we are delighted to announce a new award: The NEAC Climate Emergency Prize with a judging panel that will include Chris Packham, Emma Stibbon, Leon Morrocco and Olwyn Bowey.
Patrick Cullen PNEAC tells us more about the award, how it came about, and why it's so important . . .
Why a Climate Emergency Prize at the NEAC?
"The NEAC (New English Art Club) has a long tradition of showing work related directly to the environment and the world around us. It was founded in 1885 partly as a consequence of the radical re-engagement with nature pioneered by the French Impressionists.
This history of plein air observation is still a major strand linking our members’ working practices. Although most of us may complete our artworks back in our studios, we firmly believe in the fundamental importance of drawing from nature. Often this takes the form of a profound engagement with the landscape and with our environment.
I am sure I am not the only landscape painter in this Society who has noticed the changes to that environment over the past twenty to forty years. Industrial farming practices, deforestation and global warming have all changed the look of our landscapes and crucially their biodiversity.
Therefore, with the support of our Patron King Charles III, we have sought and found sponsorship for a £2,000 Climate Emergency Prize and a £500 runner-up prize for the best two paintings in our 2025 Annual Exhibition addressing the climate crisis.
We use the words “emergency” and “crisis” advisedly. It is important to be honest with people. A few facts should suffice to make this clear:
1. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC) over 97% of climate scientists now agree that global warming constitutes a very serious threat to humanity and is largely caused by manmade emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.
2. According to the United Nations the world is currently on track for an average global temperature rise of between 2.5° and 2.9°C and that, unless we start reducing fossil fuel emissions rapidly, this will prove a conservative estimate. This estimate is way above our original relatively safe target of a 1.5°C rise as part of the Paris Agreement signed by all governments in 2016.
3. At the same time the latest analysis from NASA concludes that emissions from fossil fuel use continue to rise rather than fall. We are still moving in the opposite direction to the course we urgently need to be on.
4. Science-based predictions of what a 2.5 to 2.9°C rise would mean for the world vary from calamitous through to catastrophic. And for each added 0.1°C rise, the problem of preventing further cumulative rises due to tipping points being passed (let alone any hope of reversing such rises) becomes ever harder.
No one has all the answers to this problem, but we feel that instituting such a prize is one small way in which we can help to further raise public awareness of such a critical matter.
It also offers those brave artists who feel impelled to address these concerns through their art (it’s not exactly the most commercial direction to take) an opportunity to show their work and maybe even win an award."
Patrick Cullen PNEAC
Futher details will be announced as we get closer to the opening date for submissions in December. Watch this space, or sign up for our email newsletters for updates.
In the meantime, we encourage you to start thinking about your entry. Here are some top-line entry rules and guidelines:
The award will be open to all artists (members and non-members) aged 18 and over. Acceptable media: Paintings, drawings, and original framed prints (excluding photography). Sculpture is not admissible. Work must have been completed in the last two years and must not have been exhibited in London previously. Works should not be larger than 2.4m along the longest dimension. All works must be an original creation by the artist.
