Climate Hope
Featuring Winners of the 2026 Sustainable Orillia Student Art Contest
Exploring creativity, innovation, and real-world environmental solutions through the eyes of young artists.
Collette Frisch
Watercolour and mixed media on paper
Orillia Secondary School, Grade 9
A Future Worth Imagining
How can art help us imagine a healthier, more sustainable world?
Through the 2026 Sustainable Orillia Student Art Contest, young artists explored innovative solutions to environmental challenges, translating research, science, and technology into powerful visual expressions.
The featured artwork, A Greener Future by Collette Frisch, highlights wildlife crossings such as those in Banff National Park. These green bridges allow animals to cross highways safely, helping reduce dangerous collisions between wildlife and vehicles.
Celebrating Success Stories
Highlighting progress rather than problems, and celebrating the creativity and innovation driving positive environmental change.
Climate Hope
Early in 2026, Orillia elementary and secondary students were invited to participate in Sustainable Orillia's Student Art Contest. This year, by highlighting progress rather than problems, the contest aimed to encourage climate hope, with the understanding that human creativity and innovation can drive positive change.
This year's theme, Celebrating Success Stories, asked students to investigate climate success stories. Using their creative skills to showcase a local or global climate success story, students demonstrated how science and technology can alleviate some of our world's most pressing climate issues in unique and positive ways.
By focusing on creative and innovative local and global climate solutions, students zero in on contemporary, real life positive outcomes, which we hope will in turn foster hope and optimism for the future in our young people.
From sculptures highlighting the use of clean energy solar panels, to green roofs lowering the temperatures in buildings, to a local company developing technology to remove microplastics from the water, and to green bridges enabling wildlife to safely move through traffic corridors, we hope that you enjoy the many unique climate solutions and the variety of media and creative expressions that our student winners have used to highlight their chosen success stories.
Just as we hope the climate innovations addressed in these artworks serve to inspire optimism for the future in our young artists, we also hope that you are inspired by the energy, talent, creativity and motivation of these talented young people.
Featured Artists
Recognizing the talented student artists whose work brings creativity, optimism, and fresh perspectives to environmental sustainability.
Creativity Inspires Climate Hope
Climate Hope celebrates the imagination, dedication, and creative energy of young people who are helping us envision a more sustainable future.
