Proud Voices Awards
Find out more about the different Proud Voices awards here:
Brian Kennedy Awards
Proud Voices Lifetime Achievement Awards
Brian Kennedy Awards
Named after Brian Kennedy, the LGBT activist and journalist who was key in setting up the first gay choir in the UK and Ireland, this award recognises the contribution members of our Proud Voices choirs make to our choral community and is given out at the Hand in Hand festivals. There are three levels of award: bronze for 10 years, silver for 20 years and gold for 30 years in a UK and/or Irish LGBT choir.
About Brian Kennedy | Award Winners 2015 | 2017 | 2019 | 2024About Brian Kennedy
At the inaugural awards at Hand in Hand Brighton 2015, Rose Collis gave this speech to introduce Brian Kennedy.
'It’s an immense honour and pleasure to be asked to present these inaugural Brian Kennedy Awards. And it’s entirely fitting that this ceremony is taking place in Brighton. Brian moved to Brighton in 1977 to continue his studies at Sussex University. He quickly became a leading light of the Gaysoc – which I should point out was not an item of designer pink underwear.
As well as setting up social events, Brian took part in a number of campaigns against anti-gay violence, biased local press coverage and, in particular, police harassment. In his diary, he wrote, ‘Heard the police chief is very anti-gay and is out to “drive the queers out of Brighton”. One day gays may wake up in Brighton and bite back.’ Well, we did! And not just in Brighton!
In 1983, Brian joined the co-operatively run London listings magazine City Limits, as first editor of its lesbian and gay section Out in the City. For two years, on one day’s pay a week, he made that section one of the most vital and popular sections of the magazine, while also ensuring that lesbian and gay issues were covered throughout the rest of the magazine.
During those first two years, Brian had consistently pushed for the section to have a lesbian co-editor. As he joked, he could be many things to many people, but being a lesbian wasn’t one of them. In 1985, the magazine finally found enough money to pay for that co-editor – and, to my immense surprise, I was appointed. For the next four years, Brian and I worked tirelessly with meagre resources and unrelenting pressure to produce a section that we believed and knew was so important to our community.
At that time, Out in the City was the only section of the mainstream or alternative media guaranteed to give equal coverage to lesbian culture and politics. And that in itself is a credit to Brian’s foresight and understanding of the diverse and specific needs of different parts of the community.
But then Brian was a man of great vision: he envisaged what the community could be and devoted his energies and talents to bringing about positive changes that would lay foundations for the future. He helped found the London Lesbian & Gay Centre; he was secretary of the Gay Business Association. And, crucially, Brian was one of the first journalists in Europe to write about AIDS, and to campaign for government action in combatting the disease.
It was an ironic tragedy that such action came too late to save Brian.
But, of course, we have one of Brian’s greatest legacies here today. The Pink Singers, which he founded with Mark Bunyan, was the UK’s first gay choir and is now the UK’s largest LGBT choir. I can scarcely believe that it’s nearly 25 years since we lost Brian. But he is here with us today. This festival is part of his vision, and part of his legacy. We haven’t lost his voice: for it can be heard every time one of our choirs sing of equality, of justice, of love and of pride.'
More information: Remembering and reclaiming Dr Brian Kennedy 1953-1990.
2015 Award Winners
Bronze awards
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Silver awards
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2017 Award Winners
Bronze awards
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Silver awards
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Gold awards
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2019 Award Winners
Bronze awards
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Silver awards
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2024 Award Winners
Bronze awards
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Gold awards
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Proud Voices Lifetime Achievement Awards
The Proud Voices lifetime achievement awards were introduced in 2023 to recognize the exceptional contributions by individual members of our choral community. These awards celebrate those who have not only given to the development of their choir, but to all our choirs, at the very highest levels..
Award winners:
Jane Edwardson founded and has been the Musical Director of Gay Abandon since its first rehearsal in September 1997. After moving to Leeds and finding no LGBT choir north of Birmingham, she decided to set one up herself.
Her first experience of conducting and arranging came about by accident whilst singing as a member of the Sheffield Socialist Choir. Jane studied choral arranging at Leeds College of Music, and has published many arrangements enjoyed by our choirs around the UK, Ireland and beyond. She trained in choral conducting and music direction with Sing for Pleasure, and is noted for her ability and skill in establishing rapport with both singers and audiences. She is a recipient of the John Coates Memorial Baton and the Love Arts Festival Judges Choice Award.
Jane has successfully led Gay Abandon to every European Various Voices LGBT choir festival since Berlin 2001 and every UK & Ireland Hand in Hand LGBT choir festival since London 2013.
As well as conducting Gay Abandon, Jane used to be musical director of the lesbian a cappella group Deep C Divas, and in 2002 she conducted them in concert at the Sydney Opera House.
More information: 2015 WYQS interview
At the presentation of her Lifetime Achievement award at Gay Abandon's 25th anniversary concert on 15 July 2023, Dr. Hsien Chew MBE, network lead of Proud Voices UK & Ireland, had this to say about Jane:
'Thank you Jane, for everything! This evening we have heard so much about Jane's incredible contributions to Gay Abandon and the local LGBT community here in Leeds and West Yorkshire, but Jane has also been crucial in helping to develop the wider LGBT choral community in the UK & Ireland.
I first met you back in 2006 when the choir I sang with, the Pink Singers - an LGBT choir based in London, came up to Leeds for a joint concert. We were welcomed at the Cactus Club, performed right here in the Leeds Conservatoire, and the next day went on a sunny walk out to Saltaire for ice cream. I remember sitting in the park with my 99 flake thinking, "Isn't this lovely? Isn't it great to have two choirs sharing music and friendship with each other, and building a community together?" I also struck me that this does not happen by accident, that creating the experience we were having right then and there requires passion, planning and a long term commitment of time and effort. Expanding that magic to the wider LGBT choral community, beyond just one or two choirs, demands a very special kind of person, and that person is you, Jane. So, in 2011 when Proud Voices, when our network of LGBT choirs in the UK & Ireland was forming, the four choirs at its core were the Pink Singers, Sing Out Bristol, Manchester Lesbian & Gay Chorus (now Manchester Proud Chorus) and, of course, Gay Abandon.
In 2014 Proud Voices put together a scratch choir consisting of choirs from around the British Isles to attend the Various Voices festival in Dublin. We also invited special guests from further afield, from two choirs in Taipei and Beijing, to join us, and we needed music which would bring this disparate group of people together and tell our story. Who did we turn to? Jane, of course! We sang her arrangement of Fred Small's "Everything Possible". I only hope we did it justice! Jane's arrangements, and the music she has shared with our community has given us a voice when we needed it. So, here we are in 2023, and Proud Voices UK & Ireland is now 64 choirs. Those two choirs who sang Jane's arrangement went back to Asia and formed Proud Voices there, and they now comprise 30 choirs, proving that everything is indeed possible.
We are all yellow bricks on the road to the Emerald City. Each of us gives a little of ourselves to build the path to our dream of a world where everyone is free to be themselves, without discrimination and prejudice, but what we need sometimes is a bricklayer to organize us, and take that road a little bit further. Jane, you are that master bricklayer.
If you have ever been to one of our Hand in Hand LGBT choral festivals you will notice that we give out these awards. They are not signs of rank or prestige, instead the Brian Kennedy awards are given out to recognize the length of contribution of individuals to our community: bronze for 10 years, silver for 20 years, and the elusive gold for 30 years. When Camilla (Veale) got in touch with me to say that you were stepping down from the choir you had founded and led for 25 years though, I knew we had to acknowledge this in a special way.
This is the inaugural Proud Voices Lifetime Achievement Award. It is given out to those members of our community who have made exceptional contributions to LGBT choirs in the UK & Ireland. I can think of no-one more deserving as its inaugural recipient thank you, Jane. Thank you for Gay Abandon, thank you for sharing your music, thank you for everything!'