The Michael O’Pray Prize is an award for new writing on innovation and experimentation in the moving image. The prize is open to all early-career writers based in the UK and is free to apply to. Three awarded texts will be published by Art Monthly and FVU, with a £500 prize for the winner, and two £250 awards for two runners up.
Now in its fourth year, the Michael O’Pray Prize is changing its application process. Applicants now send a proposal or pitch for a new text, alongside an example of previous writing, three of which will be invited to realise the proposed text and awarded: £500 for the winner; £250 for the runners up.
Find out more about the prize, application process and eligibility below.
About the Prize
The Prize is named in memory of the critic, historian and film programmer, Michael O’Pray. Over the course of his long and varied career, Mike was an impassioned and energetic champion of avant-garde cinema, highlighting the continuing influence of key figures from the past, while dynamically promoting contemporary talents in experimental film and video. In his writings, and in the many programmes he curated for Film and Video Umbrella and elsewhere, Mike always endeavoured to make radical, challenging, occasionally esoteric work accessible to a wider public – and it is with this in mind that the award seeks to encourage examples of imaginative, engaging writing that extols and advances this longstanding tradition of experimentation in film and video for a non-specialist audience.
One of the aims of the prize is that the platform it offers helps writers to receive future writing commissions. Previous winners have each gone on to contribute new articles for Art Monthly and an array of other publications.
Testimonial from Lauren Houlton, Michael O’Pray prize recipient 2017:
“For a while I have wanted to start organising screenings as a way to push forward my own research, and my most recent piece for Art Monthly has helped me (finally!) get moving on this. Some might think that this is not a big deal, but there is no way that I would have had the confidence to programme more independently, and the Michael O’Pray Prize has been so important, both in building this confidence and in driving my own research forward through the platform that Art Monthly offers. So I wanted to say thank you and highlight the way that the prize has helped me get to this point.”
You can read the winning texts from the previous awardees here:
Cassandre Greenberg, 2019 prize recipient
Laura Jacobs, 2019 prize recipient
Adam Hines-Green 2018 prize recipient
Lauren Houlton 2017 prize recipient
The Panel
Applications and final texts will be considered by an expert panel comprising:
Rianna Jade Parker, Critic, Curator and Researcher
Heather Phillipson, Artist and Poet
Dr Terry Bailey, Senior Lecturer, Programme Leader, Creative and Professional Writing, University of East London
Steven Bode, Director, FVU
Chris McCormack, Associate Editor, Art Monthly
What is the Prize?
The prize consists of:
– £500 prize for the winner, and two £250 awards for each of the two runners up
– All three texts are published by Art Monthly and FVU
Eligibility
– The Prize is aimed at writers starting out in their careers, having had no more than four articles about the arts or experimental film published in print or online. This does not include self-publishing.
– The Michael O’Pray Prize is open to submissions from across the UK.
– Submissions must be in the English language.
– There is no age limit for applicants.
– No formal education is required to apply to this prize.
How to Apply
Please submit the following four things:
1. An example of your writing of up to 1,200 words. This can be a whole article/text, or an extract, and could be previously published or unpublished. We are interested in discovering and supporting new voices who can enliven and popularise discussion of the experimental spirit in film and video art, therefore ideally the sample of writing that you submit would be about artists’ moving-image work. If you have not previously written about artists’ moving image, it could be about other visual arts mediums, or take another form of cultural criticism. Please note, we are not looking for academic dissertations, or specialist scholarly papers, couched in highly technical/theoretical language, so it is not advisable to submit academic texts.
2. A 300-350 word proposal/pitch for a new text on artist’s moving image or experimental cinema that if successful, would then go on to be published by Art Monthly and FVU. The text that you are pitching to write, if realised, should be between 1,250 – 2,000 words. The text that you propose could be for a straightforward review of a forthcoming exhibition or existing piece of work, or it could take a more creative and experimental form. We strongly suggest you read the previously awarded texts, as well as looking at Art Monthly’s published works and the texts on FVU’s writing section, to get a sense of the style and tone of the writing we publish.
3. CV of no more than two sides of A4, at no smaller than font size 11pt. Please be sure to include details of previously published articles/texts.
4. Completed Equal Opportunities Monitoring Form. This will be processed separately from your submission and will not affect your eligibility for the opportunity. You can download this as a Google Doc here or as a Word doc below.
Please submit these three items via email to: admin@fvu.co.uk
SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 12 noon, 22 October 2020
Please note that for the first assessment of your application by the panel, your name and other identifiers will be redacted.
For more information, visit www.fvu.co.uk
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