Dear YWP Writers and Artists,

As a generation growing up in a world we’ve always known was in serious danger, many of us are closely connected to our environment, our effects on nature, and what we can do to stop the tide of crisis from rising.

The continual charge from older generations that we will be the ones to fix it and the mental weight of growing up on a planet that sometimes (maybe even often) seems doomed is hard to reconcile with our everyday excitement, perseverance, and hopes of growing into lives that look bright in other ways. 

These prompts are meant as a place to process, to mourn, to consider our futures and what we can create within them, to gather, and to imagine solutions. As young people, our position also gives us a special chance to appreciate our world today, a capability to savor what we have, to enjoy the beauties of a reality that may drastically change in our lifetimes. Use those feelings, both the heavy and the hopeful, the worried and the appreciative, the challenged and the uplifted ... to create!

– Sam Aikman, YWP Alumni Advisor

SUGGESTED PROMPTS:

1. Capture the beauty of Mother Earth as she awakens in springtime. Show the appreciation you feel.
2. Send a message about the urgency of climate change through your poignant photography, painting, or other artistic medium of your choice.
3. How does the climate crisis manifest in your daily life? Show us in your art.
4. Pick an ecological crisis you’ve been considering recently. Create art about this event.
5. What are some things about our current world you’d like to remember 50 years from now? Document them in your art.
6. Do you have a particular animal you love but are concerned about losing to extinction? Create a portrait of them and the problems they face.
7. Consider a location in nature that looks different or may change in the future due to human intervention. Create art about this place.
8. How do you see the image of our future? Depict this in your work. 

Are you looking for inspiration, or are you curious about others' work on this topic? 

Check out these examples: 

• Tapas Das's Suffocated Life and Returning Life paintings 

• Zaria Forman’s hyperrealistic iceberg pastel drawings 

• Art by Nele Brönner in the subway station of Unter den Linden, Berlin which addresses the concept of the Anthropocene 

• Edward Burtynsky’s photographs (especially his "Tailings" and "Urban Mines" series)

• Diane Burko’s paintings 

This challenge was created by YWP's Sam Aikman, March 2025, as part of the Tomorrow Project Contest.

TOMORROW PROJECT CONTEST DETAILS: 

• Open to teens, 13-19, who have a YWP account. (It's free to join!)
• ​Must be original work and not published elsewhere. No AI.
• No limit to number of submissions.
• Each submission will be considered for the Tomorrow Project's six grand prizes of $250 to be awarded when the first phase of the project is completed in October 2025.
• Prize winners and honorable mentions will also be published in The Voice.

Questions? Contact Susan Reid, YWP Executive Director: Reid@YWP on the site, or by email: sreid@youngwritersproject.org

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