Awards – what are they good for?
Awards have always been controversial, whether they do, or do not have: judges; prize money; publicity, prestige, or sales, attached to them. Awards inevitably divide, there will always be some who do not agree with the criteria for judging, or on who makes the judgements.
I have recently been nominated for one of the ‘BASE’ awards for storytelling. This is a new venture started by Phrase Arts. The nominations have been chosen by public suggestion. The short list, taken from the nominations, has now gone to a public vote. I was honored to be nominated – thank you to those who suggested me. But I could not accept. It is a shame not to be able to support Phrase Arts’ efforts to encourage storytelling, but there are too many aspects of the awards I disagree with.
I don’t want my work to be judged against the work of others. When I first started storytelling in 1984 there were about 20 professional storytellers in the UK, there are several hundreds now, and growing. This expansion has diversified storytelling, there are more venues, styles, forms, aims, stories. Each teller is different, and this is what keeps the art form alive and interesting. Choosing excellence from this diversity is always going to be subjective and arbitrary. Pitching one against the other will always mean someone is left out.
The B in ‘BASE’ stands for British, and I find this very problematic. There are some serious omissions from the list of nominations, and this reflects the limited exposure of those nominating to the vast amount of storytelling that is going on in Britain. The awards do not represent the whole of British storytelling. They represent a selection of some people’s experience of some of what is going on. The current name of the awards is misleading, and doesn’t reflect that they involve a public voting process, and that those voting will not have seen all the work going on in Britain.
‘People’s Awards’ are a valuable way of honoring work. Awards do bring publicity, and this is something storytelling and storytellers always need. However they don’t necessarily represent talent or excellence, and often the best candidates don’t win. Voting depends on mates, social networking, and drumming-up a team that supports you. The results of this concern me, and can reflect a talent to get votes, rather than artistic talent. Stating that the results of the awards are the people’s choice would clearly signify on what basis the awards have been given. If the awards are to represent Britain, then a different judging process would need to be undertaken. Which would in turn bring its own horrors!
The limited choice of nominees seems partly due to the lack of advance publicity for the award and for the process of making nominations. I only knew about the awards after I’d been nominated. I am sure this is a problem that will be addressed in time. But I am concerned that voting regarding storytelling talent will only create divisions and upsets. I don’t believe it will lead to developing excellence. And I think it would be better to spend resources in a different way.
I would rather be given a beautiful bunch of flowers!
Jen
Well said, thank you.
Heidi Dahlsveen
I absolutely agree, if this was to happen in Norway I would feel at very unease about it. But on the other hand, it is accepted in other performative and creative artforms. And personally I wonder why I find it “ok” that actors and authors get their prices, and not storytellers? Of course, one element is that I personally do not want to be “judged” in that context. In Scandinavia we have seen some “bad outcome” of storyslam, meaning that some very few storytellers has gone around calling themself scandinavias best storyteller, based on wining with a 7 minutes long story. Storyslam is probably one of the most popular storytelling thing in Norway these days. But it is not community art. It is a community phenomen yes, but not art. And I think that is the problematic area for me, the somehow lack of understanding in the storytellings aesthetic. I am not afraid of the competetion because after doing this for some years one know that popularity comes and goes and comes back again. Well, I just hopes that this will not happen over here.
Sally Pomme
So good to get your thoughts and Norweigan perspective on this Heidi, Thank you. I do think there are many sides to this and I like the way you argue with them. I don’t know what the answer is. There has recently been a new ‘spoken word’ award at the Edinburgh Fringe because there is so much spoken word now. But the difference there is that all the judges have to see all the work before any awards are made, and that is not the case with the Base awards.
Chris Bostock
……and the award for most exciting, rewarding, stimulating and accessible art form goes to…..Storytelling. Or it should, if there was such a platform. But then storytelling as we see and hear it today is such a diverse beast. There are very few of us who earn our money solely as tellers – does that mean by definition that all others are therefore amateurs, people who practice a skill or art form for the love of it – nothing wrong in that, should be encouraged – but if there are going to be awards, citations or prizes given out, who has need of them? Professional tellers need the recognition of their public, promoters and critics for work purposes, the amateur seeks an appreciation of their commitment and ability for themselves. And we live on side by side, however uncomfortable it may seem at times.. We certainly need to find ways of continuing to raise the profile of Storytelling, but we are such a diverse and mixed ability crowd of people, that it’s hard to find a strong profile for our art form.
The recognition and encouragement of tellers, experienced and new, needs to be celebrated and trumpeted in good venues to interested audiences, rather than the tellers being put up against each other as sports people are. Like you I applaud the efforts put in by many people trying to raise the image and standard of storytelling – but personally I loathe the idea of competition in all art forms.
I’m looking for an atmosphere where our audiences can develop their appreciation of the art of storytelling in the first instance and the tellers second. We have some fine Festivals, which are wonderful occasions for getting together and seeing something of other people and their work. They’re not always the best places to tell stories, with many distractions and variable acoustics.
Could we, should we not lean towards celebrations of our art that leave out the competitive thrust that our current government loves so much – is this really the only way we can raise money?
There are factions and friendships that will hold and promote a limited number of tellers together, but don’t always guarantee quality. We have our glorious network of clubs that foster and nurture tellers, but for which there is no funding in the present climate. The Arts Council is shrinking and this is a good time to consider how we can all promote our work and trumpet our successes – like the number of people who are now around and telling for a start. But I fear that titles, gongs or even oscars will not always identify the breadth, depth, skill, and sustained inspiration that is required to produce wonderful storytelling from dedicated storytellers.
So should all………….well keep talking for a start.
Sally Pomme
Dear Chris, thank you for your fine words, teasing out some more issues, and throwing new light on this very tricky subject. It is so good to hear your point of view.