The Attenborough Prize

The Attenborough Prize is an annual prize associated with the Leicester and East Midlands Open Art Competition. It was originally awarded by Richard Attenborough, aiming to celebrate “emerging talent… in visual arts”
The Prize was announced in June 2007 by Lord Attenborough and the leader of Leicester City Council. The announcement was to coincide with Lord Attenborough’s opening of his personal collection of Picasso Ceramics at the Leicester Museum and Art Gallery.
The Prize was originally awarded by Lord Attenborough to the best contemporary visual artist exhibiting at the City Gallery’s Open 19 Exhibition, in Leicester, England. Lord Attenborough chaired the committee which selected the Prize’s winner from a shortlist of six artists, chosen from over a thousand exhibiting at the Open Exhibition. Since Lord Attenborough's death in 2014 the prize winner has been selected by an invited panel of judges.
Winners of the prize previously received £2000 and a solo exhibition upstairs at The City Gallery, Leicester. Following the closure of the City Gallery in 2010, the open exhibition moved to the New Walk Museum and Art Gallery. Currently the prize is £1,000.

Winners

2007 : Choterina Freer for "In my heart you are my stars forever"
2008 : Sarah Key for "One of a thousand plateaus"
2009 : Neil Raitt for "Credit Crunch"
2010 : David Raine for "My Sister, Emily"
2011 : Edward Sellman for "Ascension"
2013 : Bryan Hible for "Happy hoodie spots a ship" and Mark W Russell for "Spotlite, journey from Calvary"
2014 : Oliver Marc Thomas Leger for "Sacre Blue Baleine"
2015 : Andrea Jaeger for "Here is almost there"
2016 : Sam Boulton
2017 : Bradley Phelps for "The Winds of Change"
2018 : Alison Carpenter-Hughes for "Little Connie"
2019 : Pete Underhill for "Naughty Sugar"
2020 : Cancelled due to Covid
2021 : Edit Nagy for "Iris the Fashion ICON"
2022 : Susan Isaac for "Lines of Power II"
2023 : Pete Underhill for “Ken Tye"
2024 : Susan Isaac for "Balance and Counterbalance"