The Rory Peck Trust: Award 1998

The 1998 Rory Peck Award Brochure

From the Chairman - a great team effort

This is an exciting and important point in the development of the Rory Peck Trust. The work of freelance cameramen and camerawomen must be properly recognised by all of us in this industry, whatever our role. We need that creativity and initiative for our continued success.

hudson.gif (21532 bytes) Thanks first to my fellow Trustees: Peter Henderson, Charles Hoff, Peter Jouvenal, Colin Peck, Vin Ray and Vaughan Smith. Charlie has now moved to Atlanta, but remains a Trustee.

We owe a huge debt to John Gunston and Juliet Peck, for the organisation that they helped build. Whilst keeping faithful to the Rory Peck sense of enterprise and flair, we are now managing a more complex entity, which just grows. Our task is to become even more professional, functioning as an Award, a Trust and as a Trading Company.

It is also to develop the profile of the Trust, increase its international representation, widen the scope of its activities, and build links with other organisations. Yet again BBC World and CNN are among those producing programmes dedicated to the Award and the work of the Trust.

This annual award is sponsored by Panasonic Broadcast Europe, who share our pioneering spirit. Their support is enthusiastic and practical. In sponsoring this brochure, APTN have confirmed their long-held support for our work. New Committee members, Bloomberg Television are the sponsors of our newsletter, The Free Lens, going out for the first time later this year in hard copy and on our website. We also thank both Broadcast and the Royal Television Society who assisted us with distribution of entry forms for the 1998 Award.

This year, the Committee, the biggest forum for the television news and current affairs industry to discuss freelance issues, has been widened. We welcome: Kate Adie; Rachel Attwell, BBC World; Jack Reed, Bloomberg Television; Jon Baker, Steve Clarke, Broadcast; Peter Barron, Channel 4/ITN News; Ann Cooper, CPJ; Harriet Fear, Reuters; Peregrine Hodson; Sonia Mikich, ARD; John Paxson, CBS News; Albrecht Reinhard, WDR; Jo Roughton, Sky News; John Silver; Hiromichi Tsukada, NHK; Eithne Treanor.

Many thanks also to outgoing Committee members who very much continue to support our work: Yoshinori Imai, Hugo Swire, and Sir Sydney Samuelson CBE.

A very talented and industrious team has helped us with this Award Night. We would particularly like to thank Harriet Fear and the Reuters crews, Tom Wragg's team at BBC Resources, Lisa Mac Hale, Serena Hamilton, our landlords and neighbours, Frontline Television, our Director Tina Carr and Assistant to the Director Alex Mermikides. We are sorry to lose Merlyn Mitchell-Cotts. As Secretary to the Trust, Merlyn has doggedly pursued information on beneficiaries around the globe.

Enthusiasm is addictive. Tonight is another step towards achieving the recognition which freelancers deserve.

Lucian Hudson, Chairman, the Rory Peck Trust

Picture: Chris Daubney of Panasonic Broadcast and Lucian Hudson at launch of 1998 award.

The Rory Peck Awards Brochure 1998