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Celebrating 30 years of Awards for Artists

25th anniversary of Awards for Artists in 2019. L‑R: 2019 Visual Arts Awards recipients Adam Christensen, Larry Achiampong, Ingrid Pollard, Phoebe Boswell, Harold Offeh with Jane Hamlyn (Chair of PHF and Visual Arts judging panel), Joanna MacGregor (Chair of Composers judging panel). Photo credit: Emile Holba

Awards for Artists supports individuals at a timely moment in their careers, giving them the freedom to develop their creative ideas and contributing to their personal and professional growth.

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Supporting artists

The Awards are made every year and come with no strings attached – artists are free to use the money in whichever way they decide. Ten awards are made annually – five to visual artists and five to composers. This year, in 2024, we celebrate 30 years of Awards for Artists.

Supporting the arts in the UK has always been important to Paul Hamlyn Foundation. Much of this support is invested in arts organisations to broaden and deepen their work with their communities, and in schools to explore new ways of working with the arts.

None of the organisations we are pleased to support, from the largest to the smallest, could develop their programmes without the work of artists. Consequently, in parallel to our backing for arts organisations, the Foundation decided in 1994 to support a number of individual artists each year. Since 1994, the Foundation has awarded over £11 million to 357 artists, working in every part of the UK, and in every conceivable genre and medium.
 

“It’s been a great privilege for the Foundation to have supported so many inspiring artists and composers. To mark the 30th anniversary of the awards we asked a few of them to share their insights into what the award meant to them. Every story is singular, but taken together, a collective belief in the transformative potential of art shines through. It’s a belief shared by everyone at the Foundation – our team, our trustees and advisors. After 30 years, that belief is stronger than ever.”

Jane Hamlyn, Chair, Paul Hamlyn Foundation 

Meet the artists

For the 30th anniversary of Awards for Artists, we worked with Lilli Geissendorfer to profile 12 previous recipients.

Read their individual profiles below or download our publication, combining the stories of these artists.

30 years of Awards for Artists: Profiles of 12 Award recipients PDF 
8.778 MB 

Visual artists

  • Larry Achiampong

    “You have to keep hoping and believing art matters, otherwise it’s just nihilism, the world is literally on fire and being an artist is a way to navigate that with hope.”

  • Becky Beasley

    “I know I am changing lives, and saving lives.”

  • Adam Chodzko

    “The Award from 20+ years ago does keep shaping my reality now.”

  • Juan Cruz

    “It is partly the money, and partly the recognition, and the sense that you’ve taken another step to being sustainable as an artist. A professional recognition that allows you to forge ahead.”

  • Jacqueline Donachie

    “I felt I had just disappeared, my last two sons were born two years apart and I wasn’t going to any openings; it really did my confidence a lot of good to know that I was recognised by a community, quite a big community.”

  • Anne Tallentire

    “As I am telling you this I wonder, recollection being subjective, if I have reinvented myself through telling this same story slightly differently in each of many interviews over the years.”

Composers

  • Sally Beamish

    “Have you got the photograph from the first year? Because I’m the only woman from the 20 shortlisted, so then they analysed the applications and there was only 1 in 20 women applicants. So there were questions in the press about ​‘why so few women?’, but if only 1 in 20 were nominated, then what can you do?” 

  • Luke Bedford

    “For me, it was life changing, they caught me at a critical moment. I was so financially vulnerable, and it meant that the day-to-day worries weren’t there and I was able to write the music I wanted too. That felt amazing.” 

  • Frank Denyer

    “Trust artists to know and do the things most useful to their art. That is the most valuable thing.” 

  • Anna Meredith

    “I remember worrying that the Awards wouldn’t apply to the kind of music I wanted to make, but I said I wanted to broaden out and try some different stuff and it gave me the confidence to go for it.”

  • Pat Thomas

    “Paul Hamlyn Foundation really listens to artists and people who know what they are talking about; this is so important, and so rare. It’s experts to experts – artists nominating and judging artists – so suddenly people notice you a bit more, it’s easier to get promotion, to open doors. Especially as an improviser. Even the fact the Awards recognise improvisation, that they take spontaneous improvisation seriously at all, is very validating.” 

  • Kate Young

    “I just felt my creative body shrivelling up. It has been so challenging and I’ve had to be so stubborn to keep going. Without a doubt, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award saved my career as an artist.”

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