This report rounds up the key insights and lessons from the Big Green Challenge – a £1m competition to find community-led responses to climate change.

Key findings

The independent evaluation provides the foundation for lessons about:

• The impact of a challenge prize in stimulating community-led innovation
• The role of communities in tackling important social issues
• The barriers communities face in being part of the solution and what needs to be done to enhance their contribution.

The Big Green Challenge (BGC) was Nesta’s £1m challenge prize designed to achieve measurable carbon reduction through community-led innovation.

From 355 initial applicants, 10 communities were chosen to put their ideas into practice over the course of a year. Three winners and one runner up received a share of the £1m prize fund.

This report presents the findings from an independent evaluation of the Big Green Challenge undertaken by Brook Lyndhurst.

The evaluation ran for the whole duration of the Big Green Challenge, developing evidence and insight about the impact of a prize challenge and the practicalities of running this kind of approach.

Author
Brook Lyndhurst