Governance

The Orwell Youth Prize is a registered charity, number 1156494, established on 2nd April 2014. It was originally conceived by people running the main Orwell Prize, Britain’s most prestigious prize for political writing. The Orwell Youth Prize remains under the auspices of the Orwell Foundation.

The Orwell Youth Prize is governed by a Board of Trustees:

The board

Stephen Armstrong

Trustee

Stephen Armstrong is a journalist and author. He writes extensively for the Sunday Times, the Daily Telegraph, Wired and the Guardian. He contributes to the Radio Times and Monocle and – occasionally – Radio 4.

He has written five books: The White Island – a history of IbizaWar plc – an investigation into the private security industry which inspired Ken Loach’s Route Irish; The Super Rich Shall Inherit the Earth – an account of the rise of oligarchs in the developing and developed world; The Road To Wigan Pier Revisited – uncovering hidden poverty in the UK; and The New Poverty – part of the Unreported Britain project.

Stephen founded the Wigan Pier Workshops, is a founder member of Bug – the journalist collective behind the successful Modern Britain talks and events in aid of homeless charity the House of St Barnabas, and is an associate member of the Free Word Centre, which promotes and protects freedom of expression.

Inevitably he has a screenplay in development, where he confidently expects it to remain.

Mick Callanan

Delivery Director

Mick is an English Teacher with 27 years’ experience, including many as an Advanced Skills Teacher and Subject Leader for English and Film. He has a Masters in English Studies from Goldsmiths College. As Delivery Director, Mick leads the Orwell Youth Prize workshops in schools up and down the country.

Dr Peter Claus

Trustee, Chair of The Youth Programme Committee

Peter is an Access Fellow of Pembroke College, University of Oxford, location of the Orwell Youth Prize Celebration Days and the end of each prize cycle. He is a lecturer in History, and has helped Pembroke College pioneer a new approach to widening participation in University education. Pembroke College was nominated for the 2013 Times Higher Education Award for Widening Participation or Outreach Initiative of the Year.

 

Gavin Freeguard

Trustee

Gavin is a researcher at the Institute for Government, where his work is focused on the data-driven Whitehall Monitor project. He was previously political adviser on Culture, Media and Sport to Harriet Harman MP. Before that, he was administrator and then deputy director of the Orwell Prize and senior researcher at the Media Standards Trust (2007-12).

Gavin came up with the idea of an Orwell Youth Prize with the director of the Orwell Foundation, Jean Seaton. He holds an undergraduate degree in Modern History and Politics from the University of Oxford (2007) and a masters degree in the History of Political Thought and Intellectual History from UCL and Queen Mary, University of London (2012).

Bill Hamilton

Nominee of the literary agent of the Orwell estate

Bill was brought up in a family of literary agents, studied English at Oxford, and having learned the trade from the other side of the fence as a publisher, joined A M Heath in 1982. Fostering the careers of novelists and non-fiction writers across the spectrum from the very literary to the very commercial, in a constantly changing marketplace, is a challenge of commercial ingenuity and client management. It has brought him close to the national media, into academe and alongside government, and to the heart of a global industry that is growing in unexpected directions all the time. He has represented Hilary Mantel from her first writing to her current position as the most celebrated contemporary British novelist.

 

Rebecca Omonira-Oyekanmi

Trustee

Rebecca is a reporter and writer living in London. Rebecca’s freelance work has been published by the Guardian, the New Statesman, the Washington Post, the New Internationalist, the Independent and others. She is currently writer in residence at Lacuna magazine, a Human Rights magazine based at the Centre for Human Rights in Practice at Warwick University, and a co-editor of Shine A Light, an investigative journalism platform publishing on openDemocracy.net.

Andrew Peck

Trustee

Andrew was a lawyer for most of his professional life and was a partner in a major City law firm. Having retired in 2007, he works part-time in the insurance industry as well as being a trustee of charities principally concerned with education. Until recently, he was a trustee of the Guildhall School Trust (which raises money for, and manages, the endowment funds for the Guildhall School of Music and Drama) and a member of its investment committee. He is currently also a trustee of the Mary Ward Settlement, a charity based in Central London which runs a college of further education and a law centre.

Andrew has focused on education, and, in particular, access to it, because of the opportunities which become available to people who are enabled to take advantage of it.

Richard Blair

Trustee

Richard Blair is George Orwell’s son. Richard is patron of The Orwell Society, a membership organisation open to all dedicated to promoting understanding and appreciation of the life and work of George Orwell, as well as a trustee of The Orwell Foundation.

Matt Garraghan

Trustee

Matt is Project Lead of the Inspire Programme at St John’s College, University of Oxford, and has a number of years’ experience in the field of widening access to higher education. Originally from the North East of England, Matt has an undergraduate degree in History and a Master’s degree in US History from University College, Oxford. Currently based in both Oxford and London, his work with St John’s College involves the management of a range of access programmes for pupils aged 13-18 in the London Boroughs of Ealing and Harrow. He has previously worked on the development and implementation of the University of Oxford’s regional outreach policy, with a particular focus on areas of social, economic, and educational disadvantage in the North East and North West of England.