Prizes, grants and awards

Prizes for radio drama broadcast

The Imison and Tinniswood Awards 2008

The Writers' Guild of Great Britain and the Society of Authors are delighted to announce the winners of the 2008 Imison and Tinniswood awards for radio drama, which were presented by Pauline McLynn at a ceremony at the British Academy in London on Tuesday 21st October.

The Imison encourages new talent by rewarding the best original radio drama by a writer new to radio and transmitted within the UK during the period 1st January – 31st December 2007.  The Tinniswood Award honours the best original radio drama script broadcast in the UK in the same period.

The Imison Award

The Imison Award was presented to Adam Beeson for his play, The Magician’s Daughter.  The judges said of the play:

“A lovely, entertaining, amusing, and taut play with a mystery at its heart and wonderfully light characterisation. It travels skilfully in time, making excellent use of radio in its storytelling and plays, as stage magic often does, with notions of what is real and what we choose to believe.”

Adam was awarded a prize of £1,500, which was kindly donated by the  Peggy Ramsay Foundation.

The Imison shortlist
 
The Magician's Daughter by Adam Beeson
Chameleon by Vicky Meer
The Birth and Death of Daylight by Stephen Riley
Excluded by Michael Stewart
Left at the Angel by Jack Thorne
Tin Man by Laurence Wilson
 
The Imison Award is judged by the Society of Authors’ Broadcasting Committee. 

The Tinniswood Award

The Tinniswood Award was presented to Stephen Wyatt for his play Memorials to the Missing.  The judges said of the play:

“This is a play about burying the dead – primarily the dead soldiers of the First World War, which had an impact on the disposal of corpses of those killed in all subsequent wars.  Interestingly it is based on fact, on the efforts of one man, Major General Fabian Ware, to persuade the authorities, against strong opposition from Church and State, to establish cemeteries of identifiable graves for those killed in battle.  This led to the establishment of The Imperial War Graves Commission of which Ware was put in charge and for which, again against strong opposition, ecclesiastical and architectural, Sir Edwin Lutyens provided the design plans.
 
So much for fact.  The fiction imagines the voices of dead soldiers, reading their diaries or thinking their thoughts aloud, who seek the recognition of their buried remains by mourning relatives. We hear too the relatives searching for an identifiable place to mourn over their lost loved ones.
 
This intermingling of fact and fiction makes for a poignant play which is perfect for radio and a play, not without humour, of great emotional power. All the judges privately confessed that it reduced them to tears – and they are no “softies” either!”

Stephen was awarded a prize of £1,500, which was kindly donated by the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society.

Colin Teevan’s play Glass Houses was highly recommended by the judges and he received a digital radio, donated by Pure Digital. 

The Tinniswood shortlist
 
Love Contract by Mike Bartlett
Yesterday an Incident Occurred by Mark Ravenhill
Wasted by Shelagh Stephenson
Glass Houses by Colin Teevan
Avoid London by Mike Walker
Memorials to the Missing by Stephen Wyatt
 
The judges for this year's Tinniswood Award were: Jane Anderson, Radio Editor of the Radio Times, Shelley Silas who has written numerous plays for radio and the stage and John Tydeman, who used to be Head of Radio Drama at the BBC and played a key role radio drama there for nearly four decades.

About the Awards

The Imison Award - £1,500 to the writer

Encourages new talent by rewarding the best original radio drama by a writer new to radio and transmitted within the UK during 1st January - 31st December each year. Judges are the Broadcasting Committee of the Society of Authors.
 
The work must be the first dramatic work by the writer or writers that has been broadcast. It may also include the first episode from an original series or serial. An adaptation for radio of a piece originally written for another medium and published/broadcast/performed will not be eligible.

Submissions for the 2009 award must consist of a completed nomination form as well as three copies of the writer's original script and recording of the broadcast. Further copies will be requested if the work is short-listed.

Download the Award Guidelines

Email a 250 word synopsis and 250 word author biography to jmccrum@societyofauthors.org 

Entries will not be returned and should be sent to Jo McCrum, The Society of Authors, 84 Drayton Gardens, London SW10 9SB.

For further information about the Imison Award please contact Jo McCrum at jmccrum@societyofauthors.org or on tel: 020 7373 6642

The Tinniswood Award - £1,500 to the writer

Honours the best original radio drama script broadcast in the UK during 1st January – 31st December each year.

Submissions are producer only and are restricted to a maximum of two entries per producer. We would like to encourage producers to send in quality scripts and would prefer a script that you are confident is the best.
 
The work must be an original piece for radio, and may also include the first episode from an original series or serial.

Download the Award Guidelines

When submitting 15-minute episodes from a series or serial we will require consecutive episodes (including the first episode) to make up at least 45 minutes.

The judges reserve the right to call in the subsequent episodes if required. 

We welcome 30-minute plays provided that they were stand-alone and that characters and situations are original to the writer. An adaptation for radio of a piece originally written for any other medium will not be eligible.

Submissions should consist of a nomination form from the producer setting out the date and time of transmission, the broadcasting body concerned, along with a non-refundable entry fee of £50 and four copies of the script (as broadcast).

Email the synopsis (250 words) and biography of the writer (250 words) to Jo McCrum at jmccrum@societyofauthors.org

Entries will not be returned and should be sent to Jo McCrum, The Society of Authors, 84 Drayton Gardens, London, SW10 9SB.

Cheques should be made out to ‘The Society of Authors’. 

 For further information about the Tinniswood Award please contact Jo McCrum at jmccrum@societyofauthors.org or on tel: 020 7373 6642. 

See also

The Imison Award

The Tinniswood Award

Radio Drama Awards - previous winners