Hear from our Earth Day Artist of 2026

At Trust Links we pride ourselves on being more than just a mental health charity. Sustainability is at the core of our work: Afterall, the natural world looks after us, as so we should try to look after it. We therefore wanted to encourage the community to celebrate Earth Day WITH us.

Our Earth Day Art Competition invited the community to celebrate the natural world while benefitting from some relaxing creativity and self-expression.

We had some incredible entries into our art competition this year, and want to thank everyone who took part and celebrated Earth Day with us.

The Winning Entry: Autumn Leaves

The Trust Links Earth Day Artist of 2026 was recently announced to be Ann Bacon, with her collage, ‘Autumn Leaves’!

Ann kindly shared a bit more about herself, and how she created the beautiful collage, which will be featured in the 2027 Trust Links calendar.

“Since an early age I’ve always enjoyed being creative.

Over the years I’ve tried oil’s, pastel’s and acrylics and loved them all. I had an urge to try collage and absolutely loved it. I found I could cut or rip up paper and using a cheap glue stick create something a bit different from my usual messy style. Friends gave me their old Country living magazines and I would use the free Waitrose ones too after reading them, the quality was so good. 

My inspiration for  ‘Autumn Leaves’ began with a walk out with my dog and coming home with leaves, conkers and acorns and several photo’s. It felt like nature was celebrating the end of summer with a glorious burst of colour just for me and I wanted to do something to capture it.

I searched the magazines for the colours I might want to use and ripped them out, putting them in their colour piles of green’s, red’s, oranges etc… it took hours but then finally was ready to begin. I’d start by drawing a spiral on thick paper, and add a few leaves to start me off. I used tiny scissors to cut hundreds of random shapes and begin sticking them on building up the colours and shapes until I was happy. 

I really enjoyed the ‘me’ time and the peace and quiet of sitting being creative. I was amazed to have won the Earth day competition as the other artwork was so good!”