University College Falmouth to sponsor Nick Darke Award

University College Falmouth (UCF) has contributed £1500 towards the prize fund for this year's Nick Darke Award, a competition that is dedicated to the memory of one of Cornwall's best-known playwrights and nurtures emerging scriptwriting talent.

The Nick Darke Award commemorates the life and work of the writer and lobster fisherman from Porthcothan, near Padstow, whose many plays for radio, the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company, including Ting Tang Mine, The Body, The Riot and King of Prussia, brought him critical acclaim before his untimely death in 2005.

The University College's School of Media is collaborating with KEAP, Cornwall's strategic arts in education agency, and The Works, (http://www.danceandtheatrecornwall.co.uk/), whose remit is to support and develop a vibrant performing arts ecology in the County, to fund the £3,000 prize, that offers writers who are 16 and over, and resident in the UK, the chance to compete by submitting a script for either a stage play, a screenplay, a radio play or documentary film with a broadly environmental theme.

The Nick Darke Award is in its third year and for the first time, writers from across the UK as well as Cornwall, are encouraged to apply.

Applicants are required to submit an outline of their script (max: 2500 words) and 20 pages of sample script by Friday 12 March 2010.

The entries will then be read by a panel of readers who will produce a shortlist of ten by Friday 14 May. The ten scripts will then be considered by four judges, one from each of the four categories, who will make their decision by Friday 18 June. UCF's Director of the School of Media, Paul Inman, will judge the documentary film category.

The winner will be announced on Friday 25 June 2010 and awarded £1500 to help them complete a draft of their script. The winner will then be awarded a further £1500 on completion of this draft, the deadline for which is Saturday 25 September.

"An award that provides a writer with the impetus and the means to complete new work is something that University College Falmouth is particularly pleased to support, because we appreciate how hard it is for new voices to be heard, particularly in the current economic climate," commented Paul Inman.

For further details and an application pack, please visit www.falmouth.ac.uk/downloads/Awards/nick-darke-award.pdf, email: kerry.taylor@falmouth.ac.uk or send a Stamped Addressed Envelope to Kerry Taylor, PA to Paul Inman, Director, School of Media, University College Falmouth, Tremough Campus, Penryn, Cornwall TR10 9EZ.

University College Falmouth is the only independent Higher Education institution in Cornwall with the powers to award degrees in its own name. It has two campuses in Cornwall - at Woodlane in Falmouth and Tremough in Penryn (which it owns, and jointly manages with the University of Exeter) - and a third campus at Totnes in Devon, following its merger with Dartington College of Arts in 2008.

This merger created a new institution focusing on the expansion of Falmouth's expertise in Art, Design and Media and Dartington's expertise in Choreography, Music, Theatre, Art and Writing. The Devon-based courses will relocate to a new, high-specification Performance Centre at Tremough in 2010, paving the way for a new specialist Arts University in Cornwall by 2012/2013 that will be unique to the South West.

The University College is a founding partner in the Combined Universities in Cornwall (CUC), a unique initiative to promote regional economic regeneration through Higher Education, funded mainly by the European Union (Objective One and Convergence), the South West Regional Development Agency, and the Higher Education Funding Council for England, with support from Cornwall Council.

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For further information about University College Falmouth, please contact Jilly Easterby MCIPR, Head of Public Affairs, Telephone: 01326 213792, or email: jilly.easterby@falmouth.ac.uk

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