The Scotsman Sessions win British journalism innovation award
The Scotsman Sessions began in March, when theatres and music venues were forced to shut down. With no live performances to review, The Scotsman's arts team switched to inviting artists stuck at home during lockdown to record short video performances, for which they were paid a modest fee. The first four videos were released on scotsman.com on Friday 20 March, alongside text introductions written by Scotsman critics, and there have now been more than 150, featuring musicians, actors, comedians, dancers and poets from all around the country.
Commenting on their decision, the judges said: "This was a different, warm and appropriate response to the pandemic. Just as everyone's access to live events had stopped, and their stress levels were high, it kept artists going, and it was great to see a newspaper get involved and offer a solution rather than just watch from the sidelines."
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Hide AdOrganised and run by the Press Gazette, the British Journalism Awards saw record levels of participation this year. Some 80 judges spent three weeks sifting through more than 900 entries to come up with the shortlists for each award category. Due to coronavirus restrictions, the winners were announced at a virtual awards ceremony on Wednesday afternoon.
Also in contention for the Innovation of the Year award, sponsored by Google News Initiative, were the BBC, the Financial Times, the Telegraph, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the multimedia messaging app Snapchat.Scotsman arts editor Roger Cox said: "The Scotsman Sessions have been a huge team effort. Our writers adapted brilliantly and very swiftly to a completely different way of working back in March, and without their range of knowledge and expertise a project on this scale simply wouldn't have been possible. Andy O'Brien, our head of AV, has done an incredible job of editing and uploading all the films, and Sharon Kirk in our accounts department moved administrative mountains to streamline the payments process for us so we could get payments to artists more efficiently and with less paperwork.
"The stars of the show, though, have obviously been the artists themselves, and we'd like to say a huge thank-you to everyone who has taken part so far. Taken together, the sessions show what a hugely talented and diverse artistic community we have here in Scotland; and hopefully, sometime in 2021, we'll be able to see all these performers back on stage again, where they belong."
To watch the latest Scotsman Sessions, visit www.scotsman.com/arts-and-culture