On Saturday 23rd of July, two of our YSJournal senior editors, Abbie Wilson and Cormac Larkin, attended the Association of British Science Writers Awards at Jodrell Bank. Interestingly, the awards were held at the Bluedot Festival, a weekend event celebrating science, music, art and food! We really couldn’t have asked for a better venue – Jodrell Bank is home to an observatory and radio telescope! The awards were also part of ESOF, the EuroScience Open Forum.
As we approached the ceremony, nerves began to kick in! It was amazing to be in the presence of such prestigious science writers such as the Guardian’s Alex Bellos, who won the prize for best blog 2016 – we were certainly in awe of the talent in the room! It was also great to meet the other finalists in our category, who, like us, create a platform for young people to become engaged in science. The other finalists were the Glasgow Gist and AU Magazine, both university publications, in contrast to YSJournal which is run by school students.
We were delighted to be awarded Runner-up for this award, sponsored by IOP Publishing! We were also awarded a £200 prize fund. This was the only category in which a runner-up was awarded.
Claire Nicholson, Chief Editor of YSJournal, explains how the prize money will be put to good use…
\”We\’re absolutely delighted to have been awarded runner up for the IOP Student Publication Award. We have also been given some prize money, which we have some really exciting plans for! We\’re planning on creating a YSJ Wildlife 2017 Calendar which, although the details are still to be firmed up, hopefully you\’ll get to see. We hope to use the calendar to help us with outreach, meaning we can reach even more young people like yourselves to be inspired by science. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for updates and to keep up to date with a really exciting year to come!\”- Claire Nicholson