Public Achievement Wins @ Slugger Awards

28/11/2009

Public Achievement has received the award for 'Participation and Involvement' at this year's Slugger O'Toole political awards. This is only the second year of the awards and the event has been growning from strength to strength. Public Achievement were nominated by Basil McCrea MLA for our participation work with young people.

Slugger O'Toole is a political blogsite, established by journalist Mick Fealty. It is highly unusual in that it has bloggers from right across the political spectrum and from a wide range of perspectives, all writing together on the site. It is a must for anyone interested in Northern Ireland politics. It is great to see how the annual awards have taken on a real momentum - with this year's ceremony being only the second, but with a huge buzz around the Assembly, Councils and political offices as people wondered who would emerge as the winners for 2009.

Martin McGuinness won the 'Politician of the Year', with Dawn Purvis scooping 'MLA of the Year'. You can imagine how delighted we were to receive the participation award, given that a panel of political professionals make the decisions based on the nominations received. This is a fabulous endorsement of our work.

The WIMPS Crew worked flat out preparing for this year's awards - spending two full days at Stormont interviewing over 50 MLAs as well as members of the media and other people active in politics. Their video clips were edited down into introductory segments for each of the awards.

Our prize was this wonderful drawing - done on the night - by Guardian cartoonist, Martin Rowson.

PUBLIC DISCUSSION