Young Creative Awards 2024 - Winners Announced!

On Monday 20 May an audience of over 500 people gathered at Nottingham Playhouse to celebrate the creative talent of Nottingham's young people, at the 16th annual Nottingham Young Creative Awards. 

Hosted by award-winning journalist Geeta Pendse (BBC, Sky Arts), the event - the first in-person YCAs for 5 years - featured a powerful keynote speech about creativity from Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason, mum of the superstar Kanneh-Mason musical family.

Contributing to the celebratory energy throughout the evening was the magnificant house band, made up of the Jazz Squad and Salsa Jazz groups from the Robin Hood Youth Orchestra, led by Nottingham Music Hub.

Ahead of her set at this year's Dot To Dot Festival, YCA 2023 Music winner Serena Jasmine gave an exclusive performance of her song ‘Olive Branch’. Serena has explained how entering the YCAs had a hugely positive impact on her creativity and her confidence - before taking part, she had never even shared her songs with her family. Since winning, Serena has gone on to perform on the main stage at Rock City.

The YCA event also featured a very special performance by a group of Year 9 students from Bluecoat Academy Aspley. This year these young people have been taking part in a series of YCA workshops to build poetry and performance skills, led by YCA 2014 winner and acclaimed poet, playwright and performance artist, Bridie Squires.

This year's winners are now listed on our Hall of Fame.

For the fifth year running, the headline sponsor of this year's Young Creative Awards was Nottingham-based creative software company Serif.

Serif's amazing suite of professional creative applications have been adopted by millions of users worldwide. All of this year's YCA winners have been given Affinity Designer 2, Affinity Photo 2 and Affinity Publisher 2 software (worth over £200) for free. Thank you Serif!

Documenting the event were three YCA alumni - Lamar Francois (2012 Photography winner), Luke Brennan (2022 Photography winner) and Reece Jeffrey (2019 Film winner) - showing how Young Creatives Nottingham (the charity at the heart of the YCAs) continues to support the development of participants.

Guests at the event also received the YCA 2024 brochure, showcasing the work of all of this year's amazing winners and finalists. Once again, we are are extremely grateful to our generous sponsors STENCIL, who very kindly designed the brochure for us as part of their support of the Young Creative Awards this year.

As always, the YCA brochure is a powerful reminder of the creativity, imagination and skill of Nottingham's young people; of the importance of supporting and nurturing the talent of the next generation. As Young Creatives Nottingham's Chair, Nigel Cooke, says in the introduction: "Nottingham is a cultural and a creative city. Our assets are our young people. Our future is with them and our creative industries. The creative skills that young people have are a value and a benefit to so many more businesses and economic sectors. We will work to keep it that way."

A digital version of the brochure is available to download by following this link.

Over the coming weeks we will be sharing and celebrating the work of this year's YCA winners on our website and social media channels.