2021 Judges

Children’s Judge

Anna Bassi is Editor-in-chief of the multi-award-winning children’s news magazine, The Week Junior which, following its success in the UK, launched a US edition in the spring of 2020. Anna has been creating magazines for children for more than 25 years.  She has an in-depth understanding of what young readers engage with, and a commitment to providing brilliant, perfectly-pitched, trusted and age-appropriate content that keeps children –and their parents – coming back for more. In December 2018 Anna was presented with the Editors’ Editor Award by the British Society of Magazine Editors.

Journalism Judge

Innes Bowen is an executive producer specialising in documentary podcast serials.  She recently left the BBC where she was Investigations Editor at BBC Newsnight.  A former editor of Analysis, The Briefing Room and The Bottom Line on BBC Radio 4, she is the author of ‘Medina in Birmingham, Najaf in Brent: Inside British Islam‘ and has been described as “the woman who mapped British Islam”.

Radio/Audio Judge

Felicity Finch is an actor, probably best known for playing “Ruth Archer” in BBC Radio 4’s ‘The Archers’. She’s also a features and documentary presenter, and journalist for Radio 4 and The World Service. Her work has taken her to Rwanda several times where she’s made programmes about the long-term effects of the 1994 genocide on women’s lives. Documentaries examining how radio drama can be sues to communicate vital information to listeners have taken her to Peshawar, Albania and Cambodia, as well as back to Rwanda. In Afghanistan, alongside making features, Felicity has trained actors and directors on the Afghan soap ‘New Home New Life’. Her documentary ‘Will He Change His Socks’ was nominated for a Sony Award.

TV/Video Judge

Flora Gregory’s career spans over thirty years in the broadcast and the independent sectors. Among her peers she’s renowned for her commitment to uncovering and mentoring new talent and for bringing stories made by local filmmakers around the world to an international audience. She is currently Executive Producer on One World Media’s Production Fund and Project Director of the Global Short Docs Forum and also works with BBC Media Action, Esodoc, EDN, IDFAcademy and Medimed.  Previously she was Director of the Edinburgh International Television Festival (1990 – 92), the first chair of the Production Managers’ Association (1991) and Programming Manager of Discovery Europe’s The Learning Channel during its launch years (1992/3). She conceived and ran ‘Unreported World’, Channel 4’s long running foreign affairs strand (2000-2005) and was Founding Commissioning Editor for ‘Witness’, AJE’s Flagship documentary strand (2005-2014).

Chair of the Radio/Audio Judging Panel

Radio/Audio Judge

Abdul-Rehman Malik is an award winning journalist, educator and cultural organizer. In June 2019 he was appointed Lecturer and Associate Research Scholar at the Yale Divinity School. He also serves at the Program Coordinator at Yale University’s Council on Middle East Studies, and is responsible for developing curricula and partnerships with public schools to promote better cultural, language and religious literacy about the Middle East to educators and students alike. He is programs manager for the Radical Middle Way, which offers powerful, faith-inspired guidance and tools to enable change, combat exclusion and violence and to promote social justice. As a broadcaster, Abdul-Rehman is a regular voice on BBC Radio, offering contemporary perspectives on contemporary spirituality. Until 2018 regularly presented the popular Pause for Thought segment on Radio 2 and Something Understood on Radio 4. He hosts the “This Being Human” arts and culture podcast which explores Muslim experience and identity.

Chair of the TV/Video Judging Panel

Adnan Sarwar is an award-winning television documentary presenter. A former British soldier who served in the Iraq war alongside the US Marines, his TV and journalism career was launched in 2017 in which time he’s worked for the BBC, Channel 4 and ITV covering the Partition of Pakistan and India, Iraq fifteen years after the invasion, male circumcision in the Jewish, Muslim and black African communities, gang warfare and the drugs trade in South Africa, the high altitude mountain passes used by migrants to get from Italy into France and coronavirus. In 2020 he won the Premio Luchetta Award for Reportage for his documentary from South Africa.

Twitter: @adnansarwar

TV/Video Judge

David Strachan is a multi-award winning TV Producer and Strategist who also sits on the board of Creative Scotland.  As Founding Managing Director of Tern Television until 2018, David saw the company grow from staff of four to more than fifty in Aberdeen, Glasgow and Belfast. For 19 years he was Scottish representative on the board of the producers trade association. He served for a term on the board of Scottish Screen and has long been an active advocate for increased production from the Nations.  He is an honorary professor in the film and media studies department of the University of Stirling.

Children’s Judge

.