Only three years after they launched, the York Culture Awards have been cancelled – for 2019 at least.
Organisers Make It York have written to key people in the culture sector to inform them there will be no honours this year.
And there’s no specific commitment that the awards will return in 2020.
The awards were created in 2016 to celebrate excellence in the city’s arts and cultural sector.
At that time the chair of Make It York Jane Lady Gibson said: “We believe talent across our cultural sector should be recognised and by launching these awards, our aim is to raise the profile of the breadth and quality of work going on here.”
Taking a pause
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We are fully committed to supporting the city’s creative sector and want to explore further how we can best do this.
We have decided not to stage the York Culture Awards this year.
Taking a pause will allow us time to consider the best way forward, particularly in light of the city’s new cultural strategy, making sure we align our activity with this, as well as affording time to gather opinions from the sector.
Among the 15 winners last year, Delma Tomlin of the National Centre For Early Music was crowned cultural champion.
The Howl & The Hum won outstanding live performance, Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre was best cultural experience and Yorkshire’s Jurassic World at the Yorkshire Museum was the winner of the excellence in media arts award.