The GREEN GRADS ECO-STORIES EPSON TEXTILE CHALLENGE is an annual search through Art and Design Schools in Universities across the country to find the graduates best expressing their environmental concerns and/or love of the natural world with pattern on cloth – also keeping in mind eco-friendly textiles, dyes, and methods of production. Project director is Debbie McKeegan, founder/director of Texintel. Co-judge is Barbara Chandler, founder/curator of GREEN GRADS who initiated ECO STORIES in 2021.   

The winner of ECO STORIES the 2025 GREEN GRADS EPSON TEXTILE CHALLENGE is Lydia Hill (MA Textiles, Royal College of Art, 2025.)

She won a state-of- the-art compact Epson SureColor printer, which can apply her designs to all types of textiles, either light or dark. Epson UK are long-time GREEN GRADS sponsors, and the 2025 Award presentation was on the GREEN GRADS stand at the Surface Design Show in early February 2026. Doing the honours was Charlie de la Haye, Epson marketing strategist and sustainability advocate, and Polly Chapman, also delivering Epson’s sustainability goals, and mentoring future talent.

Past winners of the CHALLENGE (scroll down and click the boxes) have taken such diverse themes as the joy of an allotment, the exotic beauty of a personal garden, animals in danger of extinction, the rewilded Knepp Estate in East Sussex, the conservation of Biddulph Grange Garden in Staffordshire and the biodiversity of Norfolk meadows and marshes.

Lydia winning portfolio  of “gentle activism” is called Going, Going, Gone. It draws attention to the British butterfly crisis. Using handmade natural inks and scrupulous references at the Natural History Museum, she has meticulously depicted three main groups on the Red List of British Butterflies: the Vulnerable, the Endangered and the Extinct, together with their host plants. To mimic this loss of life, she made a pictorial timeline where the designs fade out: “My Vulnerable design is bright colours with embellishments, the Endangered design begins to fade and lose colour, whilst the Extinct design is in monotone that vanishes to white. It’s a deliberately stark contrast.”

@lydiahilldesigns