The 2022 APAs ceremony will be held at the BFI South Bank on Wednesday 23rd November – entries open on the 15th August.
We Are Voices – 2021 Winners of the Grassroots Production Award
Welcome to the Audio Production Awards! We created these awards to celebrate the very best in radio and audio production, reflecting the different skills and wide range of genres out there.
Whether you’re a sound designer specialising in documentary, a live sports producer or anything in between, these awards are a chance for you to have your expertise recognised.
We’ve been running the awards since 2010, originally as the Radio Production Awards (RPAs) and since 2016 as the APAs, and in that time the sector’s grown and changed enormously but what remains constant is it’s reflecting both new and upcoming talent and also those who have dedicated their careers to engaging audiences.
Winners of the 2021 APAs
We had a fantastic awards night at the BFI on the 24th November last year.
The full list of winners is as follows:
Best Arts Producer
GOLD – Michael Umney – Novel
SILVER – Leonie Thomas – Whistledown Productions
BRONZE – Ben Walker – Storyglass in association with English Touring Theatre
Best News Producer
GOLD – Rachel Stonehouse – BBC Newsbeat
SILVER – Elizabeth Cassin – The Guardian
BRONZE – Robert Nicholson – Whistledown Productions
Best Factual Producer
GOLD – Geoff Bird – Freelance
SILVER – Will Roe – Wireless Studios
BRONZE – Joe Kent – BBC Long Form Audio
Best Drama Producer
GOLD – Ben Walker – Storyglass
SILVER – Rosalind Ayres – Jarvis & Ayres Productions
BRONZE – Nicolas Jackson – Afonica
Best New Voice
GOLD – Ade Oladipo – talkSPORT
SILVER – Zakia Sewell – Falling Tree Productions
BRONZE – Liza Ward – Whistledown Productions
Grassroots Production Award
GOLD – We Are VOICES – British Red Cross/VOICES Network
SILVER – Lucy Evans – Fierce Green Productions/Kate McAll – Rhiannon Media
BRONZE – Multitrack
Best Sports Producer
GOLD – Chris Browning – Formula 1
SILVER – Tayo Popoola – Freelance
BRONZE – Olly Clink – talkSPORT
Best Ensemble Cast
GOLD – Elis James & John Robins – Audio Always
SILVER – Nikita & Islah – TBI Media
BRONZE – Zeze Millz & David ‘Sideman’ Whitely – Amazon Music
Best New Podcast Producer
GOLD – Olivia Swift – Reform Radio
SILVER – Victor Lee – The Lunar Company
BRONZE – Anna Staufenberg – Crowd Network
Best Sound Design Producer
GOLD – The Skewer – Unusual Productions
SILVER – Steve Bond – Freelance
BRONZE – Martin Austwick – Freelance
Best Entertainment Producer
GOLD – Lance Dann – Rezilience Ltd
SILVER – Natalia Rodriguez – Radio Wolfgang
BRONZE – Liam Conroy – BBC Radio 1
Best Station Sound Producer
GOLD – Chris Nicoll – WIZZFX
SILVER – Ali Rezakhani – BBC Sounds
BRONZE – Rob Green – Audio Always
Best Narrator
GOLD – Olivia Colman – HarperCollins UK
SILVER – David Haig – Pier Productions Ltd
BRONZE – Colleen Prendergast – Almost Tangible
Best Audiobook Producer
GOLD – Dirk Maggs – Audible Studios
SILVER – Richard Hughes – Anyway Audio
BRONZE – Caroline Raphael – Freelance
Gethin Thomas Award for Best Comedy Producer
GOLD – Benbrick – Novel
SILVER – Lance Dann – Rezilience Ltd
BRONZE – Jon Holmes – Unusual
Best New Radio Producer
GOLD – Hunter Charlton – Burning Bright Audio
SILVER – Rosie Merotra – Somethin’ Else
BRONZE – Eleanor Biggs – Novel
Best Host – Speech Audio
GOLD – Lady Unchained – Folded Wing / Prison Radio Association
SILVER – Elinor Hamilton – Tadah Media
BRONZE – Danny Robins – Bafflegab Productions
Best Host – Music Audio
GOLD – Ricky Wilson – Made in Manchester
SILVER – Vick Hope – BBC Audio
BRONZE – Miranda Sawyer – Freelance
Best Music Producer
GOLD – Jack Howson – Reduced Listening
SILVER – Ashley Byrne – Made in Manchester
BRONZE – Steven Rajam – Overcoat Media
Life in COVID-19 Award
GOLD – Judith Dimant & Julian Wilkinson – Wayward Productions
SILVER – Justin Dealey – BBC Three Counties Radio
BRONZE – Victoria Ferran & Kim Normanton – Just Radio Ltd
Production Company of the Year
GOLD – Listen Entertainment
SILVER – Made in Manchester
BRONZE – Fresh Air Production
You can see photos from the ceremony on Twitter, and on Instagram.
The ceremony programme is here.
Other Audio Awards
If the APAs isn’t enough for you, check out our list of other audio awards and prizes.
Listen Entertainment, 2021’s ‘Production Company of the Year’
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at the Awards
As a trade body, it is vital for AudioUK and the Audio Production Awards to properly reflect the full diversity of our sector. The awards should be representative of all platforms: podcasts, audiobooks and radio; large and small companies; based across the UK. The Audio Production Awards promotes inclusivity within our industry around gender / gender identity, race and ethnicity, LGBTQ+ identities, disability, age, socio-economic, and more.
When selecting the judges for the APAs 2021, we used the base of previous years as a starting point, when we had worked with consultant Leanne Alie, on expanding our network of audio professionals as judges. For 2021, we approached many of these judges initially to ask if they would be happy to judge for another year, and we asked the judges to make recommendations for other judges from within their professional networks. We also worked hard to expand our networks further, to ensure the judging panel reflected the full diversity of the audio production sector, something that is very important as a focus for AudioUK to continue to develop. We will ask the judges to volunteer diversity monitoring information, to ensure that we are representing the full range of experiences present within the audio production sector, and to hold ourselves accountable to this. We will also ask judges for more qualitative feedback, in order to get a wider view of their experience of the judging process. The list of judges can be seen on our ‘Judges’ page.
For the judging process, we worked with Yassine Senghor from Confronting Change, to provide the judges with a training video and notes based on Equality, Diversity, Inclusion and Bias in judging. We asked the judges to consider how the piece they were judging was reflective of the world we live in, acknowledging resources (or lack of) available to entrants and challenges potentially faced. This could mean tech or financial resources, but also access to training, professional experience, knowledge of the industry and so on.
This year, we introduced a pay what you can entry fee for individuals and freelancers who would otherwise find the entry fee prohibitive. And we are also providing a number of half price tickets to the event. We are also pleased to be the UK media partner to the Podcasting, Seriously Awards Fund, who have a fund which can be applied to to reimburse entry fees for BIPOC and LGBTQ+ people, to any UK based media/journalism awards, more info can be seen on that here: https://www.podcastingseriously.com
The money from the Audio Production Awards is not taken as profit, it goes back to AudioUK and Audiotrain, which is then used for training for the audio production sector, including developing our Diversity and Inclusion policy for AudioUK and Audiotrain. Audiotrain webinars can be seen here: https://www.audiouk.org.uk/audiotrain/
There is always more to be done. Every year, we gather feedback, in order to help input into the way that we run the next year’s event. Each year, we will ensure that we further expand our networks, both within the judges and the entrants, to make sure we are working to represent the full range of experiences across the audio production sector.
A specific target for 2022 is to make sure that we work to reach an even wider range of entrants, to ensure that we are further representing the breadth of experience across the audio production sector at the awards.
At AudioUK, we recognise the huge business and creative benefits that representing a different range of people brings within the audio industry, particularly those who have been previously under represented.
You can find out more about AudioUK and diversity here.
Fresh Air won Production Company of the Year in 2019
