Skip to main content
New award boosts working-class song and spoken-word culture

REACHING new audiences can be a hard slog for songwriters and spoken word artists, but a new initiative by Communication Workers Union (CWU) and Culture Matters might ease that burden a little.

The new Bread and Roses Songwriting and Spoken Word Award, open to everyone regardless of trade union membership, aims to encourage songwriters and spoken-word performers to write material meaningful to working-class people and communities and to encourage those communities to engage more with songwriting and spoken word.

There's a £100 cash prize for each of the top five entries to be judged by CWU and Culture Matters, with the winners performing at the CWU conference in Bournemouth in April.

Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
C&C
Report / 5 November 2024
5 November 2024
MIKE QUILL reports on a lively conference in Barnsley that took stock of working-class access to culture and proposed strategies to embed culture within the trade union movement
England
Theatre Review / 10 August 2023
10 August 2023
MIKE QUILLE relishes political theatre at its most entertaining, engaging and effective
DEVASTATINGLY EFFECTIVE: (Left) Francisco Goya’s The Disas
BOOKS / 16 May 2021
16 May 2021
MIKE QUILLE is impressed by the rigorous Marxist approach to be found in a new book on the dialectics of art
portrait
Interview / 7 November 2020
7 November 2020
ADAM THERON-LEE RENSCH talks to Mike Quille about what it is to be a working-class writer in the US and patronising perceptions of class that abound left, right and centre
Similar stories
C&C
Report / 5 November 2024
5 November 2024
MIKE QUILL reports on a lively conference in Barnsley that took stock of working-class access to culture and proposed strategies to embed culture within the trade union movement
fair play
Theatre review / 17 October 2024
17 October 2024
ANDY HEDGECOCK applauds the results of a new initiative by Equity that gives free rein to working-class talent 
Andy Kerr
Features / 24 September 2024
24 September 2024
CWU president KAREN ROSE and GRAHAM COLK speak to Ben Chacko about their memories of a giant of the union and wider movement who is laid to rest today
Royal mail vans
CWU Conference 2024 / 23 April 2024
23 April 2024