Stories Of Care’s Founder and Executive Producer, Sophie Willan, and Lead Artist and Weston Jerwood Creative Bursaries fellow 2012, Oliver Sykes, have been recognised at the Palace of Westminster with the prestigious British Citizen Award (BCA) in recognition of their extraordinary endeavours in the Arts since 2012. The British Citizen Award in partnership with One Stop, is now in its eighth year and recognises exceptional individuals who positively impact their communities throughout the country.
Stories Of Care is a writing and outreach organisation developing large scale, multi-platform creative writing and outreach programmes; focused on working with writers from diverse backgrounds, specifically care leavers, young people, low income and non-standard families. Oliver Sykes was brought on as Lead Artist in 2015 to work with Stories Of Care to deliver a seven strand programme that included: writing development programme for writers from Greater Manchester, a children’s anthology for 7-12 year olds, distribution of the anthology to children from care experience, low income, non-standard families, the creation and publication of Oliver’s novel, a children’s theatre adaptation of Oliver’s novel followed by a national tour and three paid positions at Stories Of Care.
The British Citizen Award is widely viewed as the nation’s way of recognising extraordinary, everyday people for exceptional endeavour and are truly representative of today’s multicultural Britain and we are delighted to see Stories Of Care receive this award.
