Double Win for AAM at York Culture Awards

Wow – what a night! We’re absolutely thrilled to announce that AAM won not one, but two awards at the inaugural York Culture Awards last week.

Our IMPs (Inclusive Music Projects) programme won the Cultural Equality & Diversity Award and our awesome Creative Director Rose Kent was named York’s first ever Cultural Champion.

The awards were established by Make It York to celebrate excellence in the arts and culture sector and to reward outstanding innovation, creativity and quality. We were really proud to have been shortlisted as a finalist for the Cultural Equality & Diversity Award and absolutely blown away to be announced as the winner on the night. The other finalists are all doing amazing work across the city and it was a privilege to be shortlisted alongside them all.

Rose being recognised for her outstanding contribution to the city’s cultural life was the icing on the cake. We tell her she’s brilliant on a regular basis and she doesn’t believe us. Now it’s official!

Culture Awards Rose

On winning the award, Rose said: “It’s such an honour to be named York’s first Cultural Champion. Having started out working on small community arts projects over 30 years ago, I feel really privileged to be running an organisation that’s all about supporting people to find their voice and play an active role in their local community. IMPs is a great example of why AAM’s work is so important – those young people are unstoppable when they get together, a real force to be reckoned with! They prove, time and again, that with the right support and a liberal dose of fun and laughter, incredible things can happen.”

Our fabulous IMPs also performed at the awards ceremony, with the whole audience singing and signing along with them to Thank You For The Music – you can’t beat a bit of Abba!

Huge thanks to everyone at Make it York, to the Culture Awards judges, to our fellow finalists, to Culture Awards Patron Mark Addy and to the fantastic audience members who gave our IMPs such a great reception. It was a night that we’ll remember for a very long time.