A SHORT film about a refused asylum seeker living alone in one of Glasgow’s massive Red Road tower blocks with only two pet canaries for company has triumphed in this year’s Refugee Week Scotland Media Awards.
‘The Bird Man of Red Road’, by independent filmmaker, Chris Leslie, scooped the Broadcast category at a presentation ceremony at Glasgow’s Old Fruitmarket on Friday evening.
The awards, staged by The British Red Cross, Scottish Refugee Council and the National Union of Journalists, aim – say the organisers – “to encourage fair, accurate and balanced coverage of asylum and refugee issues in Scotland”.
The competition is open to all journalists working for media outlets in Scotland and is judged by a panel of industry figures.
The full winners’ list reads:
Broadcast
Winner: Chris Leslie, for The Bird Man of Red Road.
Runner-up: Lucy Adams, BBC Scotland, for Cutting Love dealing with the difficult topic of female genital mutilation.
National Print (News)
Winner: Doug Gillon, The Herald, for an article about the plight of Eritrean athletes granted political asylum after the 2008 World Cross-country Championships in Edinburgh.
National Print (Features)
Winner: Billy Briggs, freelance, about a Syrian asylum “seeker forced to flee his homeland, leaving his family behind” and which appeared in the Sunday Mail.
Runner-up: Judith Duffy, Sunday Herald, for an article about “a Scottish Government pledge to grant asylum seekers the right to work”.
Photography
Winner: Iman Tajik, freelance, for Girl with Instrument.
Runner-up: Colin Mearns, Herald and Times Group, for a picture of Home Office protestors.
Local (Print)
Winner: Cordelia O’Neill, freelance, for an article in Glasgow Now about a group of women refugees who “staged a conference to formulate an agenda and strategies to present to politicians and to make their voices heard”.
Digital
Winner: Rachael Fulton, STV Local, “for her online feature on the plight of LBGT refugees forced to flee their homelands to escape persecution and prosecution under harsh anti-gay laws”.
Runner-up: Daily Record Online, “for their piece on the cross-party condemnation by Holyrood politicians of a Home Office poster campaign telling anyone living in Britain without legal consent to go home”.
Pic: Angela Catlin.
