These days, you don’t just read the news: you make it, contribute to it, and share it.
That’s the idea behind GuardianWitness, the Guardian newspaper’s user-generated content platform, which launched in conjunction with EE, the UK-based communications company. Available both as mobile apps and as a desktop site, the program lets readers share original videos, photos, and stories with the paper to encourage open and collaborative journalism.
Entries span the range of art, journalism, human interest stories and, of course, pet pictures.
- Tony Luck and George Tymvios (co-directors) via GuardianWitness.
Commemorating its first year, GuardianWitness Thursday announced the winners of its inaugural GuardianWitness Awards from a selection of posts by 28,000 users worldwide who contributed 60,000 entries. Those contributions have yielded more than 10 million page views on the desktop and apps so far.
The ceremony, hosted by comedian and writer David Mitchell, handed out awards in nine categories, with one overall EE Contributor of the Year.
- Floods in Aberystwyth by Giles Bennett (via GuardianWitness).
The overall winner was a 180-second animated short, Pasty Child, that traces the growing pains of a young girl with a pasty for a head. Co-directed by Andy Luck and George Tymvios, it was described as, “absurdist and dark yet warm and sympathetic.” The movie also won the Best Short Film award.
The News contribution of the year was awarded to a photo taken at the scene of the Woolwich murder, captured by an anonymous bystander, who collected the award under the pseudonym Vince Lee. One judge described the picture as “the purest definition of the word ‘witness’.”
- Soar by Souvid Datta (via GuardianWitness).
Other winners included an exhausted seal pup sheltering among mounds of plastic waste by Claire Wallerstein, winner of the Bigger picture award, and Soar by Souvid Datta, winner of Best Original Still.
Other winners include: Award for a series, Giles Bennett for his photographs of floods in Aberystwyth and Barbaros Kayan for his series on the Turkey protests; Human interest award, Mum in hospital by Caroline Johnson; Food Award, Mombasa meat market by Matt Wood; Science award, Science is everything: Higgs boson explainer by Dom Burgess; Pet of the Year Award, Mila by Harpal Padwal.
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