Youth Music have announced English Teacher as winner of the Grassroots Hero Award 2025.
English Teacher. Photo credit: Tatiana Pozuelo
The four-piece band who formed at Leeds Conservatoire, comprised of Lily Fontaine, Lewis Whiting, Douglas Frost and Nicholas Eden, will be presented with their prize at the Youth Music Awards 2025 at Troxy, London on Wednesday 15 October.
The Grassroots Hero Award, won last year by Jordan Stephens of Rizzle Kicks, recognises advocacy and support of overlooked, underfunded and underrepresented projects in the grassroots scene.
Lily, who fronts English Teacher, acknowledged their journey with the national charity:
“Youth Music were there for me at a time when I was struggling to find a way to keep pushing towards a career in music. Through financing vital regional support networks like Come Play With Me and Music: Leeds, and through personally hiring me to explore my interest in music journalism, to giving us the Rising Star (Artist) Award in 2022, I’m really grateful to them for being such an important part of my personal and the band’s evolution.”
This accolade follows the band’s Mercury Prize win for their debut album This Could Be Texas in 2024, the first act from outside London to do so since Young Fathers in 2014.
Alongside the Grassroots Hero announcement, 43 nominees across 11 categories have also been revealed and the winners will be announced live at the upcoming ceremony.
