We are extremely grateful to all our partners and sponsors. If you are interested in partnering with the Foundation in any area of our activities, please get in touch.
We are especially grateful to our Founding Patron, Richard Blair, the adopted son of George Orwell and an original trustee of both The Orwell Foundation and The Orwell Youth Prize.
In addition to the organisations we work with, the Foundation is building a community of individual supporters in the UK and internationally. By becoming a Friend of the Foundation, or a member of our new Patrons’ scheme, you can help to ensure that our essential work, and the legacy of George Orwell, lives on.
Partners
Sponsors
Previous sponsors
The Political Quarterly
Since its foundation in 1930, the Political Quarterly has explored the key issues of the day from a centre left perspective and promoted debate about them. It is dedicated to political and social reform and has long acted as a bridge between policy-makers, commentators and academics. The Political Quarterly addresses current issues through serious and thought-provoking articles, written in clear jargon-free English. Many of PQ’s readers are academics, but the journal aims to address the interests of a broad readership of policymakers, politicians, journalists, students and the informed public. The current editors are Deborah Mabbett and Ben Jackson.
The Political Quarterly was founded in 1930 by Leonard Woolf, Kingsley Martin and William Robson. Past editors include Bernard Crick, David Marquand, Andrew Gamble and Michael Jacobs. Past writers for the journal include political thinkers such as John Maynard Keynes, Arthur Koestler, Harold Laski, Bertrand Russell, Leon Trotsky, William Beveridge, Ernest Gellner, Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams.
University College London
UCL is home to the Orwell Archive, the world’s most comprehensive body of research material relating to George Orwell, and a centre for Orwell scholarship. The Orwell Foundation is based in UCL’s Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS), which facilitates critical thinking across conventional disciplinary boundaries. The Orwell Foundation looks forward to developing Orwell scholarship and cultural and political engagement in the sympathetic and stimulating environment of the IAS.
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press is a long-term partner and sponsor of The Orwell Youth Prize. In recent years, many OUP employees have taken part of the Youth Prize’s volunteering scheme, offering valuable, individual writing feedback to all OYP entrants who ask for it.
A. M. Heath
Founded in 1919, A.M.Heath is one of the UK’s leading literary agencies. A.M. Heath represents established contemporary authors, rising stars and some of the iconic writers of the 20th Century. A.M. Heath also represents several major literary estates, including the Orwell Estate. If you have a query for the Orwell Estate, please contact the literary executor, Bill Hamilton.
Penguin Books
The Foundation is grateful to Penguin Books for licensing its online resources over a number of years in the UK and for continuing to support our educational activities.
Richard Blair
Richard Blair is George Orwell’s adopted son. He is the Founding Patron of The Orwell Foundation and served as a founding trustee of both The Orwell Foundation and The Orwell Youth Prize prior to joining the Foundation’s Orwell Council. Richard is also patron of The Orwell Society, an independent membership organisation dedicated to promoting understanding and appreciation of the life and work of George Orwell.
The Centre for Homelessness Impact
The Centre for Homelessness Impact is an independent organisation which seeks to act as a catalyst for evidence-led change to enable people working in and around homelessness to achieve breakthrough results. The Centre currently sponsors The Orwell Prize for Reporting Homelessness, which will be awarded for the first time in 2023.
Arts Council England
In 2023 Arts Council England supported our new Orwell Youth Prize Regional Hub project, in partnership with the University of Sunderland and Coventry University. Each hub, in Sunderland and Coventry, brought school and college students together for an Orwell-inspired day of writing workshops led by local writers and reporters and academics from our partner institutions, centered around our theme ‘Who’s in Control?’. We also also received Arts Council support for our performances of Down and Out: Live, a unique dramatised live-reading from Orwell’s work which took place in London and Paris in 2018.
Media Standards Trust
As ‘The Orwell Prize’, The Orwell Foundation operated under the auspices of the Media Standards Trust from 2008 until 2015.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation
For seven years from its inception in 2015 to 2022 The Joseph Rowntree Foundation sponsored and supported the Orwell Prize for Exposing Britain’s Social Evils, including the Unreported Britain Project. While JRF’s funding for The Orwell Prize for Exposing Britain’s Social Evils came to an end in 2022, the prize has quickly established a reputation for rewarding and promoting social reporting in UK newsrooms and the Prize continues under the Foundation’s aegis, with JRF’s support.