**COMPETITION**
Win a pair of tickets to attend Spirit Of London Awards 2012
"Which venue held the 2011 Spirit Of London Awards?"
A- Royal Albert Hall
B- Hammersmith Apollo
C- Wembley Arena
Email your answer + contact number to
ceo@voila-london.com to have the chance to win!!
(The winner will be selected on Sunday 9th December 2012)
THE SPIRIT OF LONDON AWARDS
In association with PlayStation
MONDAY DECEMBER 10TH THE O2 ARENA NORTH GREENWICH
Now in its 4th Year the prestigious Spirit of London Awards (SOLA) takes place on the 10th December at The O2. The awards were launched by the Damilola Taylor Trust in 2009 as a legacy project to Damilola and all the other young people lost to youth violence on streets of London through the Years.
The aim of SOLA is to demonstrate to young people just how much their positive endeavours matter and how much they are valued. Looking to emulate the great celebrity awards events like BRITS and MOBOS with the only difference being that it is the young unsung heroes of London that become the celebrities for this event!
The Spirit of London Awards will this Year be staged at The O2 in North Greenwich on Monday December 10th and the line- up is both amazing and eclectic:
· Labrinth
· Diversity
· Maverick Sabre
· Chase & Status
· Stooshe
· Angel
· Noisettes
· ACM Choir feat Mizz Camara
· Mcfly
The award categories cover virtually every aspect of interest and engagement for young people. The awards are open to young people aged 15 to 25 unless stated:
· Young London heroes (5-15)
· London Community Champions
· Achievement through Music
· Achievement through Sport
· Achievement through the Arts
· Achievement through Education
· Achievement through Media
· Achievement through Fashion
· Young Business Entrepreneur
· UK National Young Campaigner of the Year (5-15)
In an arrangement with UK Athletics and Team GB London 2012 all the awards on the night will be presented by medallists from the Olympic and Paralympic squads.
Christine Ohuruogu said “The Spirit of London Awards is such an important event and I have been lucky enough to have been involved every year from the start. This has been a fantastic year for London but the inner city areas still face huge challenges and so we should not lose sight of how important a project like this is – Putting the spotlight on the positive things young people are doing is not just refreshing it is vital if we are not to allow the small negative faction get all the attention – This is unfortunately what has tended to happen and SOLA brings some much needed balance in this respect”
One final award is that of LONDON LEGEND – This award is voted for by young people and is given to an iconic Londoner they feel has graced London as a positive adult role model. In 2009 it was Sir Michael Caine – 2010 Barbara Windsor – 2011 Harry Redknapp
Labrinth who also performed at SOLA 2010 said, “I love this event and all that it stands for. In 2010 I played an acoustic version of Bob Dylan's timeless classic ‘Times They Are A-Changin’ as I think that it's relevant to the project, and how it illuminates the positive things young people are doing in London”.
Ashley Banjo of Diversity said, “We performed at the inaugural event at the Alexandra Palace back in 2009 and then again at the Royal Albert Hall last Year. It truly is an amazing show and it is largely the unsung heroes that light up the stage with their stories – Diversity are so proud to be part of the SOLA family and cannot wait to get on The O2 stage this year to do our bit for the cause”
Mayor of London, Boris Johnson said, “The Spirit of London Awards represents everything that is great about London and it is so refreshing to see young people being rewarded for their positive contributions on such a grand scale”
David Cameron – Prime Minister said, “These awards represent everything that is great about the young people of our Country. They are a credit to their community and to their city and I am delighted to see what a fantastic job the Damilola Taylor Trust has done in the way the project now has the young people who have come through the awards actually running the event. An extraordinary achievement and a fitting finale to what has been an amazing Year for our Capital City”
For all other tickets
Notes to the Editors:
Each category has 3 celebrity judges attached and they choose the ultimate winner on the night from a short-list of 3 nominees in each category – The short-list is decided from the thousands that come in by a team of youth workers and SOLA Ambassadors.
Each nominee will meet at Downing Street on November 29th when they attend a reception in their honour hosted by the Prime Minister. Poignantly this is two days after the actual 12th anniversary of Damilola’s death.
While the project was set up as a legacy the vision was to create a movement of empowered youth by bringing those short-listed through the nominations as a collective force for good. The SOLA Foundation was set up in 2011 and now has 140 members of both individuals and groups that have come through the programme.
The Foundation has democratically elected chairs and is now developing a policy manifesto by working with its members and affiliated youth organisations and charities.
They launched a successful school INSPIRE road show this Year and have delivered inspirational peer mentoring workshops to 5,000 pupils.
The Foundation has also worked with the Metropolitan Police in scoping out a project called WALL OF SILENCE – A pilot event was staged at City Hall in October when the SOLA Foundation collaborated with the City Hall peer outreach team and Scotland Yard – 150 young people from across London came together with senior police officers to debate the issues that create mistrust between youth and police.
SOLA Ambassador Dean Atta said “getting nominated for SOLA changed my life as it gave me so much more confidence in not just my poetry but also my ability to inspire others – The SOLA Foundation is now like a huge collective family of like -minded young people all of whom want to see positive change where negative issues effect young people – The Wall of Silence project shows just what we can achieve as a cohesive unit and it was great to see the police recognise this”
Gary Trowsdale – Founder of the awards and MD of the Damilola Taylor Trust said “When we set out to create a project that could come to represent real change in the tough inner city communities we feel the greatest affinity for we raised a few eyebrows when we told the home office we were going to target the positive kids not those involved in crime. There were 29 deaths on the streets of London in 2008 when we started developing the project. Big problems need big solutions and the challenging nature of the way so many charities were chasing ever diminishing pots of funding meant that sustainable outcomes and positive results were becoming harder and harder to achieve. With SOLA we broke the mould basically. With one of the main grooming tactics of the gangs being to tell those around them that “nobody cares about them” we set out to prove otherwise. Our strategy was not to have one – This of course made the academics running things at the home office youth violence division scratch their heads – Our aim was to create a huge brand that the cream of London’s young achievers would be drawn towards – Young people understand the power of brands after all – Once we had the young people engaged in the running of the awards show from Year 2 we would then look to have them take charge of developing outreach projects – We are rightly proud that our school road show is now getting the accolades from head teachers that it is. It is run by young people for young people so we are not that surprised.
Our strategy was to wait for the cream of London’s young achievers to write it for us – The SOLA Foundation are now drafting a policy manifesto which we are sure the Government and local authorities will resonate with – The Police certainly do!
The Wall of Silence project was commissioned by the new Met Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe and we are delighted with the early results from the pilot event.
Staging the awards night in the way that we do is hard but worth every ounce of effort we put in – We believe the young leaders of tomorrow can lead today if given the resource and support to do so – The Olympics proved what great results you can get with huge investment, massive infrastructure and the propaganda of the nation’s media behind you.
We don’t have this kind of resource of course but we think our young people are every bit as important as elite athletes.
We are indebted to the wonderful The O2 and its staff for allowing us to stage the event there this Year and look forward to a long and rewarding association with them. We are also deeply grateful to sponsor Sony PlayStation for their support and appreciation of the projects goals and objectives.
Rebecca Kane, general manager at The O2 said:
“The O2 is thrilled to be working with the Spirit of London Awards and transforming the venue into the home for this amazing spectacle. Celebrating youth culture and being inspired by so many brilliant young people is part of The O2’s DNA.”
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