With the Mercury Music Prize shortlist and Booker longlist both recently announced, it's a good time to look at British prizes for the arts.
The Mercury music prize (now known as the Barclaycard Mercury Prize) was established in 1992 by the now-defunct telecoms brand (part of Cable & Wireless) for the best British album of the previous 12 months, chosen from a shortlist of 10. It was intended as a more credible and serious prize than the widely-mocked Brit Awards, which were generally reckoned to pay more attention to sales than to quality. The Mercury prize was about promoting telephony and now credit cards, but also celebrating the best new music.
It has been frequently surrounded by controversy. The prize has been accused of being deliberately opaque in its rules and administration, with a generous definition of British that included Antony and the Johnsons, and the judges being kept secret for many years (they typically include music industry figures and journalists such as Conor McNicholas, now editor of Top Gear magazine, formerly of NME). While many literary prizes publish the rules and provide applications forms online, the precise criteria for the Mercury are not displayed publicly.
There have also been claims of sexism and racism over its fondness for white male guitar bands, and tokenism when non-white acts won - despite this, winners have included Dizzee Rascal, Ms Dynamite, Talvin Singh, and Roni Size. The shortlist has often seemed to comprise a token jazz record, a token folk act, a token pop act, a token black act, a token dance act, formerly a token classical act (they seem to have given up on classical music), and the remaining list all indie/rock. The judging panel seldom includes significant expertise in jazz, classical, or traditional folk, yet decides between a wide range of genres.
The Brit Awards are given by British trade body the British Phonograpic Industry. They begun in 1977, when the Beatles won 3 awards, and have a chequered history of disastrous live shows and controversial events: Jarvis Cocker invading the stage during Michael Jackson's performance, the KLF performing with Extreme Noise Terror and bringing a dead sheep, bizarre nominations for best male and female solo act who hadn't released any records in the year in question, and the usual autocue failures, drunken bust-ups, shouts, and boos (see Wikipedia). Most awards are voted by British Phonographic Industry members, though the public choose a few, such as best single. In recent years they have sought to compete with the Mercury prize with the Critics' choice award for best upcoming artist, given to Adele in 2008 and Florence and the Machine in 2009. There is a separate ceremony for classical music.
The Brits and Mercury prize are rivalled by such events as the Q Music Awards and the NME Awards, promoted by magazines and focussing on the music that appeals to their readership. The MOBO awards are given for Music of Black Origin, with prizes for best hiphop, soul/R&B, jazz, reggae, gospel, African act, and DJs. Despite its name, white people such as Amy Winehouse and Tim Westwood often win. The MOBOs typically vie with the Brit Awards for starry guest performers, spectacle, and incomprehension over how the winners were chosen.
The Booker Prize, for the best novel of the year, is the most well-known and generally highly-regarded of the serious British arts prizes. It was first awarded in 1969 as the Booker-McConnell Prize, and was known for many years after the wholesaler Booker, who sponsored it until 2001 - despite the lack of commercial value in associating a grocery company with a literary prize. Since 2002, it has been sponsored by Man Group, a London-based investment company which began as a rum and sugar broker in the late 18th century, making it one of the few literary prizes whose income is founded on slavery.
The franchise has now been extended with an international prize given every 2 years, a Russian version, and occasional ventures like the Booker of Bookers which has been awarded for notable anniversaries in the prize's history, generally to Salman Rushdie. The Booker winner is chosen by a jury combining eminent figures in arts and broadcasting (for 2009 these include John Mullan, professor of English at University College London, Radio 4 broadcaster James Naughtie, and critic Lucasta Miller), plus a token celebrity (Sue Perkins in 2009); they are required to read around 100 books, select a longlist and a shortlist, and then pick a winner.
The prize has an impressive website, which includes the rules and entry form. Entrants must be from the UK, the Commonwealth, Ireland, or Zimbabwe. In 2009, 132 books were considered, of which 11 were "called in" by the judges, i.e. they were not entered for the prize but the judges felt they were of merit. Publishers may submit 2 books each, but anyone shortlisted in the last 5 years may submit a book over and above that limit, and judges can consider books that have not been formally entered (this allegedly leads to publishers not submitting their top novel in the hope that the judges will call it in anyway, and submitting 2 other less good novels so they can get more books in contention). There is no limit on how many times you can win it.
The winner gets £50 000, while authors with shortlisted novels get £2500 and a hand-bound copy of their own novel. However, this does not come for free: publishers submitting a book must undertake to pay £5000 if the book is shortlisted and another £5000 if they win. This payment does not guarantee a place in the shortlist, and is intended to pay for publicity; they must also ensure 1000 copies of the book are available for sale after the longlist is published - online books are eligible but paper copies must be sold if the work is shortlisted. Publishers must also supply the pages to be bound into the hand-bound prize for the shortlisted authors. Shortlisted works must be made available as e-books and given to a charity to be recorded for the blind (a process which the Booker Prize Foundation funds). And nominees get to go to a prize dinner, which is generally televised.
The other main literary prize in the UK was known for many years as the Whitbread Prize. Like the Booker it takes its name from an implausible source, the brewer Whitbread; since 2006 it has been known as the Costa Book awards, after another Whitbread brand. It is made up of a collection of five prizes for best novel, first novel, children's book, poetry, and biography (including autobiography and memoir), and a book of the year selected from the five winners. Each category is judged by 3 people and winner gets £5000, while a 9-person jury (including a fairly distinguished chairperson, one judge from each category, and three "people in the public eye who love reading") chooses who receives the grand prize and an additional £25 000.
Application forms which include the rules can be downloaded. The author must have been resident in the UK and undertake to be available for publicity; the publisher must promise to bring out a paperback promptly if they win. Publishers of shortlisted and winning novels must "use their best endeavours" to put Costa stickers on their books, and put "approved Costa Book Awards crediting" on the cover of later editions. As well as providing considerable advertising for Costa thereby, winners of the category awards must provide £3000 for publicity, and the grand winner £4000.
The oldest UK literary prize is claimed to be the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, administered by University of Edinburgh, and established by the wife of the eponymous publisher. Prizes are given for fiction and biography, and in the initial year 1919 Hugh Walpole's The Secret City and Henry Festing Jones's Samuel Butler, Author of Erewhon (1835-1902) - A Memoir won. A Passage to India, Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, I, Claudius, The Heart of the Matter, and Arthur Waley's translation of Monkey are among the more notable prizewinners.
The winners, who get £10000 each, are chosen by the university's professor of English, with graduate students assisting in the judging. Notably, the same author cannot win in more than one year, although they can win both prizes in one year - nobody has yet. It is unusual among British literary prizes in admitting American entries: The Corrections and Cormac McCarthy's The Road have won in recent years. Submission simply involves sending a copy of the book without any application form or commitment to pay anybody any money; the leisurely process begins with submissions in December and the prize is awarded the following August.
Less notable is the Betty Trask Award, given to "traditional or romantic" first novels. It is administered by the writers' trade union the Society of Authors, awarding a total of £25000 each year (in various proportions) to British and Commonwealth authors under 35 to use to travel abroad. Winners include Zadie Smith's White Teeth and Alex Garland's The Beach. Unusually it is open to published or unpublished novels, though publishers are required to assist with publicity. Winners are decided by a panel of five judges, who may select books that were not submitted, and can withhold prizes if no book is good enough.
In the visual arts, the Turner Prize is by far the most celebrated award in Britain. It was set up in 1984 by a group called the Patrons of New Art to promote contemporary art, is administered by the Tate gallery, and named after the British painter JMW Turner. Curiously, like the Man Group, Henry Tate's money originally came from sugar. It has been sponsored by (then-)anonymous donor Oliver Prenn, American investment bank Drexel Burnham Lambert (whose 1990 bankrupcy, due to illegal junk bond deals, led to the awards being cancelled that year), Channel 4, and Gordons Gin; the prize is currently £40 000, up from £10 000 initially.
Originally it went to the best British painter based on work of the previous year, but since then has been skewed to a more youthful market, with entrants required to be under 50. The public can nominate entries, although some people have claimed that little attention is paid to these. The shortlist and winner are chosen by a team of judges, who include curators and critics, with one token non-art-world person per year. Shortlisted artists exhibit in a special show, normally in one of the Tate's galleries, but the award isn't judged on this, just on the work for which they were already shortlisted. Restrictions on how many times an artist can be shortlisted have been tried, but are no longer enforced.
Parodying the Turner Prize, The K Foundation (otherwise known as pop act the KLF) offered the K Foundation Art Award (Wikipedia; Stewart Home) in 1993 for the artist who had produced the worst body of work in the previous 12 months. It went to Rachel Whiteread, who also won the Turner Prize that year. The K Foundation award was twice as valuable, £40 000 against the £20 000 of the more official prize. She reluctantly accepted the larger prize when the K Foundation threatened to burn the money - probably not an idle threat as they later burned a million pounds just for fun.
The BP portrait award claims to be the world's most prestigious portraiture award, offering a £25 000 first prize and second and third prizes, as well as an exhibition of selected works. It is open to artists aged 18 and over, and judged by a panel including curators, critics, artists, and a representative of the sponsoring oil company. An application form is available from their website during application season.
Not mentioned here are perhaps the best known arts prizes in the UK, The British Soap Awards, and the BAFTAs for film and TV. The latter are voted for by members of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and carry a similar weight to the Oscars in the USA.
There are many ways of running an arts prize, from the simple to the opaque. Some are run as publicity tools with requirements for winners to take part in promotion, wear stickers, pay money, and follow arcane procedures; while others simply involve sending your work in an envelope and trusting the judging panel will pick the best. Few have any public involvement in the selection process.
As to the question of why we should take any award seriously, the awards organisers typically feel that should depend on the cash sums awarded and the glitziness of the awards ceremony. However most people will esteem an award based on the expertise of the judging panel, the openness of the selection procedure, and the list of previous winners.
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This year's James Tait Black winner has just been announced - see http://www.bookprizeinfo.com.
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