Anglia Ruskin lands Macmillan Prize hat-trick

First year part-time student Irene Dickson-Bulleid took the £1,000 first prize, while second year part-time student Daisy Hirst took the £500 prize for winning the Lara Jones Award, a new category for the most promising book for babies or very young children.

A further three MA students and two BA (Hons) Illustration students from Anglia Ruskin’s Cambridge campus were selected in the Highly Commended category.

The previous two winners of the Macmillan Prize for Children’s Picturebook Illustration, Mike Smith and Gemma Merino, both signed publishing contracts with Macmillan Children’s Books and their first books will be released in the coming months.

Presenting the awards, Macmillan’s Senior Art Director, Anne Glenn, described Irene’s wordless book, ‘Blocks’, as a highly original take on the darker, potentially anarchic behaviour of children.

Martin Salisbury, Professor of Illustration at Anglia Ruskin, said: “We are thrilled for all of the students.  Irene is wonderful example of the levels of commitment it takes to succeed in a competitive area of the creative arts such as this.

“Like many of her peer group, she has to make great sacrifices to attend the MA course, not least that she has to get up at 4am every Wednesday to travel to Cambridge from her home in Hereford for her weekly teaching day.  To achieve so much at such an early stage of the course is a fitting reward for all of her hard work and for reorganising her life around the course. 

“Daisy’s background is in creative writing, having studied the subject at the University of Warwick.  She too has worked incredibly hard to reach this point and I am confident that she will be a major success.”

 
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For more press information please contact:

Jon Green on t: 0845 196 4717, e: jon.green@anglia.ac.uk

Andrea Hilliard on t: 0845 196 4727, e: andrea.hilliard@anglia.ac.uk
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