The Orwell Foundation is an independent charity. We use Orwell's remarkable legacy to celebrate honest writing and reporting, uncover hidden lives, confront uncomfortable truths and, through the Orwell Youth Prize, to encourage all young people to think and write creatively and critically.
The Orwell Youth Prize is an annual writing prize for young people in secondary school in the UK, using the writings of George Orwell as a starting point to encourage entrants to write critically and creatively about the world around them. The Prize encourages entries in all forms of writing - articles, stories, poetry, essays, scripts and even video game design!
This year's theme is 'Freedom is...' George Orwell writes and thinks about many different kinds of freedom in his novels, his essays, and non-fiction, from freedom of thought and the imagination to political freedom, freedom from poverty, and freedom in the natural world. We want to encourage young people to think critically and creatively about what freedom means to them.
Uniquely, we offer all our entrants personalised feedback, which is made possible by our brilliant network of volunteer readers, who come from across the fields of publishing, literature, academia, civil society and more. Everyone who enters before our feedback deadline of Wednesday 5th March 2025 is offered feedback, and a chance to submit a new draft by our final deadline of Wednesday 30th April 2025.
Please contact The Orwell Youth Prize Programme Manager, Tabby Hayward, at [email protected] for more informaiton and to get involved.