ORAM AWARDS WINNERS ANNOUNCED: Innovative female and non-binary artists, composers and instrument designers to be honoured
Groundbreaking artists honoured by
2024 Oram Awards
Artists to be celebrated at No Bounds Festival, Sheffield on Saturday October 12th
Five of the most innovative experimental artists, composers and instrument designers from across the UK have been announced as the winners of this year's coveted Oram Awards, in partnership with The Radiophonic Institute and PRS Foundation. This year the Orams have teamed up with No Bounds Festival, Sheffield, who will host live performances and sound workshops from past and present winners of the awards.
The Oram Awards celebrates women, trans, non-binary and gender expansive artists who are pushing the envelope of creativity in sound, music and related technology. Previous winners include Loraine James, Klein, Venus Ex Machina, Francine Perry aka La Leif, and No Home. The work of this year’s winners represents the wide spectrum of innovative sound artists working in the UK today.
Hanna Tuulikki, is a British-Finnish artist, composer and performer based in Glasgow. Their hybrid approach to sound blends vocal improvisation, voice-processing and composition, with manipulated field recording and electronics to tell 'stories' about reworlding in times of biospheric crisis. Currently, Tuulikki is studying migrating birds to ask how we might shift our understanding of migration as disruptive and view it instead as a process central to all life on earth, focusing on the extraordinary Marsh Warbler in particular. The Marsh Warbler composes its song by ‘sampling’ other bird species that it hears around the world during its first year of life.
Among this year's awardees is Liverpool-based conceptual sound artist and performer Lola De La Mata. Lola’s work explores listening and hearing practices, tinnitus and aural diversity, experiences of chronic illness as well as disrupting the embodied etiquette of classical music performances. Her 2024 debut album, Oceans on Azimuth, was inspired by her experience of severe tinnitus and featured sonic landscapes crafted from throbbing heartbeats and tinnitus phantoms reimagined through musical instruments made from glass, metal and even ice.
In addition to creating performances and interactive installations using light, sound, dust, and electromagnetic fields under the moniker xname, London-based Italian musician Eleonora Oreggia is the creator of REBUS, a novel musical machine that can be played by plucking electromagnetic waves. Similarly, The Silver Field, the project of East-Midlands based musician Coral Rose Kindred-Boothby, performs using modular synthesisers and other self-built instruments; weaving together song-soundscapes with samples, analog synthesis and live vocal manipulation, creating a rich and dream-like tapestry of sound.
Dali de Saint Paul is a prolific collaborator and a prominent figure in Bristol's improv scene. The raw vocalist has been experimenting since 2012; her frequently-improvised approach blurs sonic lines between instruments, destabilises spatial and linguistic borders, she embodies a polyphonic, politicised act of womxn through the ages.
Named after Daphne Oram, one of the founding members of the original BBC Radiophonic Workshop, the awards aim to build on her legacy. With others she worked at the workshop creating music for the distant future, the distant past and inside the mind. Along with other women of the workshop, including Delia Derbyshire, Glynis Jones, Jenyth Worsley, Maddalena Fagandini and Elizabeth Parker, Oram played a vital role in establishing women at the forefront of innovation in newly-emerging audio technologies not only in the UK but around the world.
This year’s award winners will receive a £1,000 development bursary as well as access to The Oram Awards Mentoring Program. This years judging panel was Dr Mariam Rezaei (multi-award winning composer, turntablist and senior lecturer in music, Newcastle University), Philippa Neels (creative director of NYX), Dr Iris Garrelfs (sound artist and senior lecturer in Sonic Art, Goldsmiths, University of London) and Karen Sutton (Oram Awards co-director and lead producer).
“I am proud to see the spread of exceptional talent across this year's Oram Award winners, who have all demonstrated an exciting range of innovative practices. It is essential we continue to champion the voices of women and gender diverse music creators, and I am delighted to be working with the Oram Awards team to amplify the voices of a further five outstanding winners.” - Beka Bee, Grants Coordinator, PRS Foundation
The Oram’s are also excited to present a new collaboration with No Bounds Festival, Sheffield. As part of the festival The Oram’s will be hosting a day of events at Gut Level, Sheffield’s newest community space for queer/Lgbtq+/women/non-binary people, on Saturday 12th October in collaboration with Key of She Collective (KoS) & the Radiophonic Institute. In addition to a 3 hour improvisation and play workshop to experiment with synthesisers and experimental electronics, No Bounds will also be showcasing some of this year's winners across the festival.
Alumni
2023
UK winners: Cecilia "Cil" Morgan aka afromerm, Hannan Jones, Geo Aghinea, Helen Anahita Wilson, Charlotte Joseph aka No Home, Natalie Roe
International Category in partnership with British Council: VIKTORIA aka rEmPiT g0dDe$$, Maya Al Khaldi مايا الخالدي
Event & Ceremony at Kings Place, London
2022
UK winners: Ella Kay, Amble Skuse, Kelly Jayne Jones, Lia Mazzari, Lula.xyz, Amy Cutler
International Category in partnership with British Council: Rani Jambak, FRKTL
Event & Ceremony in partnership with Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival
2021
Winners: Magz Hall, Vivienne Griffin, Lia Mice, Lou Barnell, Maria Sappho, Venus Ex Machina.
Online awards & panel event in partnership with Brimingham based experimental festival Supersonic
2020
Winners: Loula Yorke, Nicole Raymond (NikNak), Poulomi Desai, Una Lee, Vicky Clarke, Yifeat Ziv
Due to Covid the live ceremony was replaced with an evening of exclusive sets on SonitusLIVE/Twitch digital platform
2019
Winners: Nwando Ebizie, Ain Bailey, CHAINES, Natalie Sharp, Steph Horak, Andie Brown
Presentation ceremony at Kings Place, London as part of Venus Unwrapped Festival
2018
Winners: Georgia Rodgers, Loraine James, Francine Perry, Hannah Jones, Aja Ireland
Presentation ceremony taking place at BlueDot Festival at Jodrell Bank Telescope, Cheshire
2017
Winners: Klein, Elvin Brandhi, Kathy Hinde, Claire M Singer, Mary Stark, Ewa Justka, Sally Golding, Shelly Knots
Inaugural event at Turner Contemporary, Margate
