Small community group scoops SCOPE

By SCOPE Admin from NICVA

Published on 10 Jun 2005

Good communication is not just about spending large sums of money on glamorous publications was the message at this year's SCOPE Awards.

Good communication is not just about spending large sums of money on glamorous publications. A small community group has won a top prize in the SCOPE Communication Awards for a local newsletter produced on a budget of £150.

Dennett InterChange in Donemana, County Tyrone, delivers 700 copies of its quarterly magazine to local homes. The material is collected by volunteers and has the added bonus of serving the whole community - Catholics, Protestants and a tiny number of people from abroad.

"The judges, half of them from the private sector, were mightily impressed by the quality and range of publications and websites entered for the competition," SCOPE editor, Paul McGill, told the awards ceremony today.

The prizes were awarded by Martin Lynch, author for stage, film, radio and television and by Rachel O'Riordan, who is directing Hurricane at the Grand Opera House.

"Communicating well is a challenging task because the target audience may have low literacy skills, have English as a second language, suffer from physical or mental disabilities or be otherwise hard to reach. Meeting needs is what it is all about.

"Dennett InterChange took the top prize for small organisations because it knows its audience and its newsletters and reports have a home-spun quality that its readers appreciate.

"But we had a wonderful range to choose from, including well designed work from Playboard NI, which came out as clear winner in the large organisations category," Mr McGill said.

Alan Watson, director of CitigateSMARTS, said the efforts being made by the voluntary and community sector to communicate well made a very favourable impression on him.

"As someone from the private sector, I was very impressed by the variety of the publications, the high standard of design and the though that has gone into meeting effectively the need that exists for information and comment.

"It is clear that voluntary and community organisations are taking the task very seriously and devoting a lot of imagination and skill to getting their messages across.

"Among other entries, we had a clever motorsport campaign, a website that was informative and easy to use, an information leaflet in comic strip format, a thoughtful video on homelessness and a training pack on racism by and for young people," Mr Watson added.

Notes for editors

SCOPE is a monthly social policy magazine published by NICVA which promotes debate on issues such as poverty, community relations, equality, social inclusion, health, education and the environment.

The SCOPE Communication Awards are run annually to recognise the high quality of communication in several categories such as information leaflets, promotional concepts, large print/audio and websites.

The list of winners follows on below.

More information, including contact details for the winners, is available from Paul McGill, editor of SCOPE 028 9087 7777 or 0772 1746 805 (m).