Charles Parker Prize for student radio features

In April, 2004, the Centre for Broadcasting History Research created the Charles Parker Prize for Student Radio Features, an annual award open to students studying radio at Further or Higher Education establishments within the United Kingdom. See below for information about the first four winners of the award. There was no prize in 2009, but we are very pleased to announce that after a break of a year there will be a Charles Parker Prize for the best Student Radio Feature in 2010.

Again the competition will offer a prize of £500, provided by the Charles Parker Trust and the University of Sunderland, and a two-week work placement, offered by the Documentaries and Features Department of BBC Radio to the best Student Radio Feature completed and assessed during the qualifying period.

The competition is free to enter and the closing date is 26 February: click here for full details..

Previous winners

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.

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.”

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.’

In 2008 the winner was Matthew Rogers of University College Falmouth for his piece 'A long commute' telling 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’. You can listen to ‘A long commute’ here and the prizegiving here.