It’s awards season in the book world and it’s been a busy month above and beyond that for the Collective Wisdom team, collectively and individually. We’ve kicked off our work with the prestigious Orwell Prizes, who’ve announced an impressive array of judges for their prizes across fiction, political writing and journalism.
English PEN announced the shortlist for the inaugural PEN Heaney Prize, celebrating poets whose outstanding work focusses on social engagement as well as the winner of the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize, won by Avi Shlaim’s timely autobiography, Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew.
As well as promoting prizes, we’ve been celebrating prize-winning clients, with Spiracle Audiobooks impressing the judges of the FutureBook start-up awards and coming away with the trophy. Spiracle’s latest offering, AL Kennedy reading her book On Bullfighting, written a quarter a century ago, was audiobook of the week in The Guardian.
The winners of this month’s biggest prizes, the Booker Prize and the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non Fiction are very familiar to the team. Ruth worked with both Samantha Harvey and Richard Flanagan on earlier books, and her guide to discovering the Orbital author’s backlist is published on the Penguin website.
Steve McQueen is perhaps the only artist to have won both the Turner Prize and an Oscar and we were delighted to attend an in-conversation event with him and our client Joshua Levine, who is the historical consultant on his latest film, Blitz, at the Imperial War Museum.
Ben McKnight is working with Paraorchestra – the collective of disabled and non-disabled musicians – who recently performed Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs at London’s Southbank Centre and Royal Northern College of Music, with a third show to come at National Concert Hall Dublin, ahead of which, artistic Director Charles Hazlewood was interviewed for RTE’s Arena arts show, as well as Irish Times and Business Post. Ben has also been advising Oldham Coliseum Theatre, as it prepares to announce details of a new show for 2025, and an imminent update about Oldham Council’s plan to refurbish and reopen its old home in Fairbottom Street.
Arts marketing consultant, Selina Ocean, was in Coventry recently to support the delivery of the Future Works forum, created to explore how Culture Works, an evolving collaboration between representatives from the cultural sector, Coventry City Council, local universities and others with an interest in developing and promoting arts and cultural activity for the benefit of all Coventry residents, can better communicate with everyone. Selina is busy working with the valuable feedback and findings from the day to shape a communications strategy that will ensure they can create an inclusive space for discussion and sharing, as well as effectively communicate shared opportunities across the city.
Shona, as Publicity Director at Harvill Secker, has been working on the Haruki Murakami campaign that has catapulted his novel to #3 in the Sunday Times hardback fiction bestseller list, the author’s highest chart position in a decade. Innovative events included an exclusive evening for influencers at Java Whiskers cat café in White City and a ‘Murakami Monday’ celebration at Foyles Charing Cross Road. The book was praised in reviews in Daily Telegraph, FT and the i with a big spread in The Guardian for an exclusive interview.
This has been the month when many have decided to move over from X to Bluesky, and we’ve had lots of fun compiling a starter pack of the best cultural brands and creative people on the app. We’re there as @collectivewisdom.bsky.social – do join us and let us know who else we should be highlighting on the starter pack.
