The Charles Parker Prize 2012
We are very pleased to announce that the Charles Parker Prize, established in 2004, will be awarded again in 2012. There will be three prizes Gold, Silver and Bronze awarded to individual students for the best radio feature completed and assessed during the qualifying period.
The winners will be announced at the annual Charles Parker Day on Friday 30th March 2012 to be held this year in London at the Regent Street campus of the University of Westminster.
The competition is FREE to enter and offers the following prizes:-
GOLD: 2 week placement in BBC Features and Documentaries in Broadcasting House, London + a SADiE 6 Sound Suite editing system provided by Prism Sound.
SILVER: 2 week placement in an independent production company + a SADiE 6 Radio Producer editing system provided by Prism Sound.
BRONZE: 2 week placement in an independent production company + a bottle of Champagne provided by Prism Sound.
The Judges for the Charles Parker Prize 2012 will be:
Simon Elmes (Chair) Creative Director, Features and Documentaries, BBC
David Prest Radio Producer and Managing Director of Whistledown Productions
Susan Jeffreys - Radio Critic of the Daily Mail
This award is open to students studying radio at Further or Higher Education establishments within the United Kingdom for a radio feature (maximum duration 15 minutes) produced between 1st March 2011 and 29th February 2012.
The feature should in some way reflect an essence of Parker's own work - for example, story led documentaries (or short features) that bring life to the stories and concerns of ordinary people through creative radio production techniques.
Entries must adhere to the terms and conditions of entry and be submitted as an Audio CD accompanied by a signed Entry Form.
This form must also be signed by your tutor and sent to:-
Charles Parker Prize 2012
David Puttnam Media Centre
St Peter's Campus
University of Sunderland
SUNDERLAND
SR6 0DD
For further information about the Prize please email andy.cartwright@sunderland.ac.uk
Previous winners
2010
For the fifth year of the Charles Parker Prize it was decided to award three prizes Gold and a joint Silver.
GOLD Memories of a Marriage - Edwina Pitman (Goldsmiths College, London)
The judges praised this portrait of two sides of a marriage that fell apart as the result of the husband's drink problem. "Its strong involving story and natural flow of narrative" was "full of drama and surprises: simple and painful", "A good story, well told, with thoughtful editing which allowed the listener to take in what was being said and what it meant."
SILVER A Decent Man - Adem Waterman (University of Sunderland)
The judges much appreciated this Ballad of the Unemployed. They called it "viscerally bold" and "quite daring". "I liked his anger" said one judge, which another called "tangible and touching", delivering "a distinctive, stylish and vigorous taste of the North East."
SILVER Insomnia - Danielle Wilmot (Sussex University)
Insomnia was "a very good idea for a piece with an arresting opening and some very witty mixing". It is "a risky programme...not frightened to be boring, that used 'ums' as rhythm and words as a bass ground and that successfully created the feeling of insomnia"
2008
A Long Commute - Matthew Rogers (University College Falmouth)
A Long Commute told the story of immigrant land-workers from Eastern Europe and their lives in the UK. Judges were united in their praise of this sensitive and sophisticated programme saying "touching stories, beautifully translated", "a snapshot of lives we over-report but don't really know".
2007
Lieutenant Pigeon - Katie Burningham (Goldsmiths College, London)
The third award was given to Katie Burningham for Lieutenant Pigeon, a five minute documentary on the 'Save the Trafalgar Square Pigeons', a campaign group formed in 2000 to challenge the ban on feeding pigeons in the Square. It centres primarily upon the figure of a ex-soldier and homeless man called Tony, aka Lieutenant Pigeon. Katie said `I was thrilled that a piece about more esoteric members of society was recognised by the judges. Winning this award was the best way of giving my thanks to the people who spared their time to take part in the feature.
2006
Family Ties - Ruth-Anne Lynch (University of Sunderland)
The second award went to Ruth-Anne Lynch , a recently graduated MA student from the University of Sunderland, for her feature, Family Ties, which chronicled her return to her family home in Guyana, and the illness of her father. Of this feature, Simon Elmes said" The voices and personalities were strong and arresting - it was quite literally a slice of life, moving and amusing. The complete freshness of the programme and its sheer zest were what took my imagination."
2005
Inside Out - Mark Williams (Goldsmiths College, London)
The first award winner Mark Williams was a first year student on the Communications and Media degree course at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Mark discovered radio while serving a sentence at Wandsworth Prison. Inside Out is an audio diary of his last hours before release, and his first minutes as a free man. It chronicles his emotions as he awaits his moment of freedom, the euphoria which follows it and the mixed feelings on encountering the outside world again. Mark received his award from Simon Elmes at the second Charles Parker Day event in Birmingham in April, 2005. Presenting him with his prize, Simon praised the power of the piece, the moving nature of the content and the control with which it was handled, adding: "This was an amazing piece of work, technically assured, beautifully assembled, with an unbeatable mix of actuality and personal confessional." Receiving the award, Mark said that making Inside Out and receiving the prize had changed his life, and would continue to do so. Charles Parker would have approved.
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