KWN UK Awards - Derby Assembly Rooms - 4th May

On the 4th May, I travelled to the Assembly Rooms in Derby for the annual Kid Witness News UK Awards ceremony. The event was held to present the shortlisted films with their awards, as decided at the Judging Panel Day in March. In between the screenings of the schools' film entries, a local band provided entertainment throughout the ceremony. The room crackled with excitement as the results were announced, as follows...

• Best Pictures and Sound - Ryburn Valley School
  




• Best Global Citizenship - Knox Academy





• Best Reporting Team - Leasowes Community College





• Best Learning Journey - George Dixon International School





• Best Story-telling - Testbourne Community School
  

Then came the Grand Prix Award - an extra-special award, as the winners would be travelling to Hamburg later in the month for the KWN European Awards! The children and teachers in attendance were very nervous to hear the results and the winners of this award were:

Testbourne Community College!

The school's excellent film entry, entitled "B is for Apples", was selected as it was engaging, well-researched and brilliantly executed. The film clearly expressed the importance of maintaining the planet’s biodiversity and how the elimination of one species (the bee) would heavily impact upon many others.

What was great about the ceremony was that every school left with an award. KWN is such a good CSR programme in terms of getting schools involved at a professional level and it was lovely to see how proud they were when their films were screened. Everyone in the room applauded the work the children had done, which was wonderful, as the standard of the film entries was really high this year!

What I didn't know at the time of the awards was that I would be travelling with the teacher and the children from Testbourne to the awards in Hamburg as the Panasonic UK representative!! More on this later...