Saboteur Awards Festival 2020 – How it looks from here
Despite everything happening in the world at the moment, it’s still been an exciting time for the Sabotage team. It was a huge relief recently when we discovered we’d be allowed to keep our funding (that we’d fought through two applications to get), which meant we could liaise with artists on how to bring the #sabawards20 to audiences – from a safe distance.
Since then we’ve set up a Sabotage Reviews YouTube channel, which you can subscribe to here. The reason we’re asking people to subscribe to this is that on May 16 (our would-be-festival date), we’ll be uploading content from the likes of Jamie Hale, Wise Talk, Kat Lyons, Ross McFarlane and Bibi June, alongside a few other names too. We’re also making arrangements for a live on-the-day panel, which we’ll release more information for shortly.
The content they’re creating will be made available on the day. Some of these materials will be available long-term but some will only be available for a specified period of time (each video upload will clarify these details for viewers).
It wouldn’t be a Saboteur celebration without the awards element and we’re delighted that so many people are helping us along with this. At the time of writing our shortlist voting form has received in the region of 3,500 submissions! We’re grateful for each and every click, and each and every social media share (of which there have been many). Thank you to everyone who has helped us to spread the word this year.
If you haven’t registered your vote for the shortlists yet, you can still do by clicking here to access the official form. Votes are open until midnight on May 13, which means anything submitted after that time will not be counted.
How are we running the awards this year? That’s a mighty good question, and one that we’ve tried hard to find an answer to.
The plan we’ve settled on is that all 48 shortlisted artists/organisations will receive an invite for a Zoom meeting, dated for May 16, and they will also be given the option of sharing their invite with a plus one (we know it’s note quite the same as having your nearest and dearest there, but in case you’re not isolating with all of your loved ones we hope this will soften things slightly).
The Zoom meeting will be hosted by Sabotage Reviews Director Charley Barnes, who will be recording the announcements. Once the awards themselves reach a conclusion, the footage will then be made available via our YouTube channel for everyone else to access. However, we’ll also be announcing the winners through our social media channels after the SabaZoom Awards (their official title now), so you’ll be updated regularly through those pages as well.
We know it isn’t quite the same, but we hope these awards – and the obvious excitement they’ve brought to so many of you so far – are something to look forward in among the madness.
If you have any questions about the awards, or associated issues, please do email Charley at [email protected].
Thank you, as always, for your continued support. We hope you and your loved ones stay safe and well in these strange times.
Warm wishes,
The Sabotage Reviews Team
