Witchell Prize Winners 2016

The winners of the Jonathan Witchell Memorial Prize for Best Radio Feature 2016 are Maria Craig, Jack Ferguson, Josefin Dahlin, Joel Rock and Alan Thurston for their piece Laughing Matters. Their feature focuses on how laughter therapy can help maintain health and well-being as well as being a lot of fun. The family and friends of Jonathan Witchell commented on the nice range of interviews, the honesty of the reporter and the excellent editing. They also said the sound of laughter throughout the piece was very infectious!

The prize, donated by the family of former student Jonathan Witchell who died suddenly in 2007, rewards outstanding student work in the field of radio feature production. Jonathan was a graduate of the MSc in Media Management in 1997. After graduating from Stirling Jonathan moved in to radio from where he started his BBC career at Radio Devon, before moving on to Radio Lincolnshire. He then joined BBC Radio Kent in 1997 where he worked for nearly a decade.

Student Alan Thurston summed up his delight in receiving the prize : “This award was very touching, especially since we got on so well as a group, and it’s lovely to know that our hard work was very much worthwhile and a prize to be given for it was very generous. With this project we wanted to capture both the seriousness and importantly the joy of laughter, and how it has the ability to bring people together.”  Alan’s group colleague, Maria Craig, also agreed : “It was a real pleasure to receive this award and think it’s great  that Jonathan’s family continue to recognise and support the work of students at Stirling University who are finding their way into radio production. We laughed a lot whilst working on the piece and the icing on the cake was in receiving the prize.

The prizes and certificates were presented by tutor Suzy Angus on 14th September.