2017 Audio Recognition Judges Announced
We are pleased to announce the judges for our second Audio Recognition Award, a £5000 prize to recognise an exceptional audio documentary broadcast in the last year.
Our judges have been set the difficult task of listening to our entries, identifying unique stories, engaging characters and the inquisitive spirit of Whicker. The judges meeting will take place on the 3rd of April where they will decide on a final shortlist of 5, with the winner and runner-up to be announced at Radio Festival on May 23rd.
Whicker’s World Foundation founder Valerie Kleeman said “As a judge I would be looking for a story that paints a picture in my head, opens my mind to something new and stays with me.”
So without further ado, the judges…
Nina Garthwaite
Nina Garthwaite is the Director of In The Dark, an audio arts organisation that aims to change the way people think about spoken-word radio by lifting it out of its traditional settings and celebrating it in new ways. Over the last seven years In The Dark has commissioned new works from producers around the world, and staged countless live listening events at festivals, theatres, cinemas and museums. For the last two years Nina has also been a collaborator at Hubbub, an interdisciplinary research project based in The Wellcome Collection in London that explored rest and its opposites. Through this Nina has developed an interest in audio as a mind-wanderer’s medium and is exploring the alternatives to “storytelling” within audio craft, both historically and in the present day.
Jonathan Freedland
Jonathan Freedland is an award-winning journalist, author and broadcaster. He has been a weekly columnist for the Guardian since 1997 and is the presenter of BBC Radio 4’s contemporary history series, The Long View. He is also a regular contributor to a range of US publications including The New York Review of Books. In 2014 he was awarded the Orwell Special Prize for journalism. He is the author of eight books, five of them best-selling thrillers under the name Sam Bourne. He has written and presented several documentaries for BBC Radio 4 – and began his career as a radio reporter for BBC News, with stints on Today, the World at One, the World Tonight and Newsbeat.
Sarah Geis
Sarah Geis (@sarahegeis) is a Chicago-based independent producer, editor, and teacher, and a former Third Coast Audio Festival artistic director. She has led workshops at community organizations throughout the U.S, and presented at audio gatherings around the globe. Sarah got her start in radio with StoryCorps, where she travelled the country in an Airstream trailer recording interviews, and then founded StoryCorps’ Bay Area recording and outreach program. She swears her website will be functional any minute now.
