Poet in the City projects up for prestigious industry awards
Awards season 2022 is in full swing and we are pleased to share that some of our recent projects are in the running for prestigious industry gongs.
A Drop of Hope, delivered in collaboration with the Francis Crick Institute in summer 2021, saw twelve virtual poets in residence – Will Harris, Shamim Azad, Clare Pollard, Mohamed ‘Haykal’ Abdi, John Hegley, Fathima Zahra, Ibrahim Hirsi, Keisha Thompson, Nazneen Ahmed, Eeshita Azad, Momtaza Mehri and Hanna Ali – write poems that reflected on the impact of the vaccination program, and the shifts and changes we’ve all gone through during the Covid-19 pandemic. The result was a large-scale exhibition of poetry outside the Crick’s own makeshift vaccination centre, the Manby Gallery. The poems were inspired by 5,000 postcards written to our poets by people being vaccinated at the Crick, the reflections of the volunteers working at the vaccination centre, and the experiences of communities in the Camden area, where the institute is based.
We’re delighted to share that last week the project won a ‘Wood Pencil’ prize at the D&AD awards – a gathering of the world’s best creative work from across the commercial design, advertising, production and craft disciplines, and judged by over 400 global creative leaders, practitioners and innovators. The project had been shortlisted as part of the ‘Environmental Graphic Design’ category.
As if this weren’t accolade-enough, A Drop of Hope was also selected as a World Health Organisation case study for “innovative concepts to communicate science during the COVID-19 crisis”.
Both thrilling recognitions of a project that we hope will continue to make waves post-pandemic.
Woolwich Speaks is also up for an award this season as part the The Pineapples: Festival of Place – a bringing together of professionals across the built environment to unpick what makes a place thrive.
Vying for a golden pineapple in the ‘Community Engagement’ category, Woolwich Speaks (launched in August 2021), was a community-led project celebrating the area’s vibrant past, present and future through poetry, film and public art. The project culminated in the Woolwich Epic poem, written by Rasheeda Page-Muir after conducting life story interviews with locals ranging from community leaders and young people to business owners.
We’re thrilled at the global attention these creative projects have garnered, by such respected organisations. Poetry has a way of binding people and place and many of our projects have a distinct community voice at their core. It is through our exceptional partners and the bringing together of creative minds across different fields, that these deeply personal and community based stories can be amplified.
Isobel Colchester, CEO
We would like to thank the above bodies for recognising these two inspiring projects, and of course extend congratulations to all the other nominees and projects involved.
See A Drop of Hope here
See Woolwich speaks here
