2019 Winners
The five winners of the Charles Parker Prize 2019 for the Best Student Radio Feature were announced at the Centenary Charles Parker Day at Bournemouth University on 5 April. BBC Radio 4 joined with the Charles Parker Awards to offer a broadcast slot on the network to each of the five winners. They were invited to collaborate with a coach drawn from some of the very best feature-makers working in radio in order to adapt their features for transmission on BBC Radio 4 in July and August 2019.
Gold Award
A Young Sel in a Small Town - Sian Medford - University of West London
Selina Medford grew up in Port Talbot, South Wales, where people of West Indian heritage were in a minority. Now she takes her daughter back to relive her experiences.
The Judges thought her colourfully creative feature was “such a lovely simple idea. An important piece of social history mixed with modern reaction as the family reunites – a rich, dynamic production, with its rich sense of hard lives lived to the full – a really worthy Gold Charles Parker winner.”
Prizewinners
The Flapper - Bruce Guthrie - University of the West of England
A memorial to a much-missed matriarch told through a single household object as her family celebrate the life and cookery of Audrie Guthrie, an idiosyncratic and creative mother. It’s a celebration of what the judges called her “idiosyncratic, matriarchal ways – a radio feature which acts as a way of dealing with loss as well as containing quiet joy.”
Kidnapped - Henry Stokoe - University of Salford
This documentary-drama presents a binaural experience which follows two very different true stories of abduction - one without long-lasting consequences, the other, devastatingly fatal. The judges were struck by the “great, direct interviews; it’s a well-crafted feature with interesting stories and is technically mature.”
Beyond the Ballot - Rosa Eaton - University of the West of England
Fran De’ath is a retired UN Election Organiser who now lives on a houseboat in Bristol, but the voyage of her life is extraordinary - a true story of an ordinary person rising to meet extraordinary circumstances. This feature was praised by the judges as a “beautifully layered, well told and edited story, with a great talker at its heart - a worthy winner.”
My Life After Grenfell - Rhys Gunter - University of Westminster
Three survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire - Alison Moses, Emma O’Connor and Antonio Roncolato - recount the hardships they have endured since that fateful night in June 2017. The judges said, “although Grenfell is a well-known story, this chilling retelling of the fire and its aftermath brings a new authentic perspective – a very high-level achievement.”
Runners-Up
Ten student features were nominated for the Centenary Prize: the other five finalists were featured in a programme broadcast on Radio 4 Extra on Sunday 28 July 2019.