This past Monday some of the most creative young talent in Nottingham – along with their families and friends – packed into the Nottingham Playhouse for an evening of celebration that put the previous nights Bafta backslapping to shame.
Now in its fifth year the Nottingham Young Creative Awards has gone from strength to strength, and this years show was the biggest yet with ten categories covering the creative spectrum – including the brand new addition of an award for Dance.
With awards for everything from architecture to music, fashion to photography there was plenty of amazing work on display as the night progressed and it was amazing to see the dedication, commitment and pure talent of the young people involved on the night showing that Nottingham’s creative future is in extremely good hands.
Through the night we were also treated to several live performances including a show opening set from the fantastic Frankie Rudolf, a perennial NottinghamLIVE favourite who had the crowd mesmerised from the start. Music award winner Stephanie Hargreaves treated us to a wonderful rendition of her winning track What If, with sister Elena on backing vocals – the two of them teamed up again to close the show with their band The Hargreaves. There was also a truly sensational dance performance from three of the award winners in that category – Josh Attwood, Aisha Webber and Natifah White captivating the crowd with a stunning rendition of Conqueror showing just why this category was a welcome and deserved addition to this years ceremony.
Nottingham Playhouse based spoken word group The Mouthy Poets were on hand to help out with the Creative Writing Award category, reading extracts from the works of the winners Isabel Perez, Olufunmilayo Odeyemi and Alice Billen, and doing a fantastic job of sharing the emotion and power of some sensational pieces.
At the end of the night came the main award, the events “big picture” as host Mark Del called it, the Young Creative Award 2013, which was presented by Ian Smith, director of the actor group Television Workshop, which has been responsible for giving the likes of Joe Dempsie (Game of Thrones) and Vicky McClure (This Is England) their first steps towards greatness – Ian took to the stage Bafta in hand to explain the importance of awards (the award he was carrying saved the studio from closure when ITV pulled its support) before announcing that Film category winner Alex Harvey was the Young Creative of the year for his fantastic movie Explore.
All in all this was a fantastic night when the spotlight was shone on some of the amazing young talent this city has to offer, many of those named on the night are only on the first steps of truly incredible careers and it was great to have been there to see them taking those first steps.
All that remains to be said is a massive congratulations to everybody who won or was nominated for an award this year, and we look forward to seeing even more in 2014.
For more information on this years winners visit the Nottingham Young Creative Awards 1013 website
