The Culture Vulture is very proud to be a part of the Blog North Network, since we joined forces with Kate Feld of Openstories and Susie Stubbs of Creative Tourist a couple of years back we have facilitated bloggers workshops with Yorkshire Sculpture Park & Hepworth Gallery, Tate Liverpool, Manchester Weekender and Food Glorious Food at Duke Studios in Leeds). Last year the Manchester Blog Awards (running from 2006 in conjunction with Manchester Literature Festival) became the Blog North Awards and we had a fabulous evening at The Deaf Institute celebrating the very best of blogging from across the North. We’re not biased (much) but we were delighted when Yorkshire blogs The Magic Foundation, A Negative Narrative, Hopelies at 24 Seconds a Frame, SquidBeak and Considerate Trespassing won or were runners up in the awards.
This year Yorkshire is again flying the flag with some excellent blogs shortlisted. Whilst we know that it’s been a very challenging year for those responsible for whittling down the nominated long-list, so we’re particularly pleased to see Them Apples, Milners Blog, Boff Whalley & The Good Stuff nominated. We really wouldn’t want to have to judge this bunch to pick a winner, good luck to Herb Kim, Christian Payne, Steve Dearden, Chris Gribble, Sam Jordison and Jenn Ashworth who have the unenviable task of deciding on just one winner per category.
Also good to see Ten Penny Dreams nominated, we met Amy recently at the hyperlocal unconference we co-hosted with Talk About Local at Mima in Middlesbrough. I particularly enjoyed visiting her blog after hearing of ‘So I’m A Smoggie’ a series of posts extolling the great stuff about Teesside, as it’s a magnificent place which usually gets a bad press.
Anyway as a founder member we’re probably supposed to be entirely neutral, so looking beyond Yorkshire we particularly enjoyed seeing a whole host of new blogs this year that we were not aware of, as well as some old favourites such as ‘I never knew you were such a monster‘ & ‘Fontilan’.
Despite misguided snobbery from certain quarters, the blogging community goes from strength to strength, the fact that so many really great blogs are at the heart of developing great communities of readers gives me great heart. (I won’t claim that I have any skill mind you). Why wait to share your passions? Awards are fantastic in recognising bloggers who have created & crafted something of value. They are the icing on the cake, a pat on the back and recognition that your creative outlet has made a connection with people. That’s why we’re proud to be amongst the northern blogging community, having great fun, and supporting each other. We hope you’ll be joining us at the Blog North Awards to raise a toast to this very democratic tradition in story telling.
Will you be at Gorilla in Manchester next Wednesday 16th October 7.30pm? We’ll be presenting an award so in need of some support ourselves!
Thanks for the mention – glad you enjoyed the Smoggie posts! Hope to see you at the awards next week.