Food Season Awards 2025
The British Library Food Season is known for championing the most exciting voices and ideas in food writing, history, politics and culture. For 2025 we are taking the Food Season to the next level with the British Library Food Season Food Awards. Unlike any other food awards, these will recognise the value of narrative cookery writing, storytelling in archives, museums & exhibitions, support new voices in food writing, celebrate a Food Hero and shine a light on the Library's food collections.
The Food Season Food Awards will be judged by Nadiya Hussain, the Food Season Team and invited guest judges. Shortlisted nominees for each category will be announced in mid-April with the final winners announced at the start of June at the Food Season Food Awards Announcement at the British Library.
There are four categories for the Food Season Food Awards:
- Food Season Food Hero Award
- Food Season & Vittles Food Stories Fellowship Prize
- Food Season Food on Display Award
- Food Season Narrative Cookery Book Award
Food Season Food Hero Award
Your chance to choose a UK Food Hero! The British Library Food Season is known for championing the most exciting voices and ideas in food writing, history, politics and culture. For 2025 we are taking the Food Season to the next level with the British Library Food Season Food Awards. Central to this is the Food Season Food Hero Award.
A shortlist of outstanding Food Heroes has been chosen by the Food Season team and key individuals in the world of food. Each of these people have had an outstanding positive impact on the food we eat, food culture or our understanding of food.
Unlike the other awards, the winner of this award will be chosen by you!
Find out about the amazing work of the individuals on our Food Hero shortlist below, and vote for your winner by following the link below.
The Food Season Food Hero Award Shortlist
Lorraine Copes
Lorraine Copes is a multi-award-winning social entrepreneur, board member, communicator, and coach. Having spent two decades as an executive director for brands including Gordon Ramsay Restaurants and Corbin & King, Lorraine felt compelled to establish Be Inclusive Hospitality CIC in 2020 due to the persistent lack of representation of people of colour in positions of influence and across the supply chain. This social enterprise now plays a leading role in igniting much-needed conversations and delivering initiatives to drive meaningful change within the hospitality, food, and drink sectors.
Kath Dalmeny
Kath Dalmeny is a passionate food campaigner and advocate for action on social and environmental justice, and is the Chief Executive of Sustain: The Alliance for Better Food and Farming. Over a career dedicated to improving the food system, Kath has helped instigate and run projects including the Sustainable Food Places Network, Campaign for a Better Food Britain, Beyond the Food Bank and the Campaign for Better Hospital Food. During Covid-19 Kath worked with the Good Law Project and Doughty Street Chambers to launch a judicial review of the government's approach to children's hunger during school holidays. Outside these specific initiatives, as Chief Executive of the charity Sustain, Kath helps facilitate and coordinate a broad alliance of organisations, agencies, places and individuals committed to improving the food system for citizens, producers, animals and the environment. Kath's irresistible energy means she can bring disparate groups together to find solutions to complicated problems. Kath is a great strategic thinker, able to see the big picture, but she also has the compassion and humanity to understand and respond to the ways that a broken food system impacts on people's lives and our environment.
Ravneet Gill
Ravneet Gill has worked as a pastry chef for over ten years. After completing a Psychology degree, she studied at Le Cordon Bleu before working her way up the ranks in different pastry sections all over London - most notably, St. JOHN, Llewelyn's, Black Axe Mangal and Wild by Tart. In May 2018 she set up an organisation called Countertalk; a platform designed to help connect chefs, provide education and promote healthy work environments in the hospitality industry. Through Countertalk, Ravneet holds much-lauded food-based events, industry talks and aims to create a more equal and supportive workplace to help foster new talent. Through her work with Countertalk she has shone a light on the more negative side to hospitality and restaurants - sexism, inappropriate language and behaviour, unfair working hours - and has affected real change.
Nick Jefferson and Ella Cooper
Nick Jefferson and Ella Cooper - founders of Wylde Market online farmers’ market, dedicated to sourcing the best food in the country straight from micro, artisanal producers. It’s a dynamic model of fresh seasonal food and drink from around the country, made by sustainable producers who set their own prices. But what makes Wylde stand out beyond even supporting small producers and finding the ‘best’ food from around the UK is how Wylde is challenging head-on the food system status quo. Wylde is fearless in questioning the role of supermarkets and showing how a reliance on them is damaging to the food system, health and the environment. Nick has made it his mission to empower a stronger understanding of where our food comes from and its impacts.
Louise Lateur
Louise Lateur is the managing director of e5 bakehouse. Louise drives an ethical bakery with a commitment to sustainability and biodiversity, while nourishing a passionate team. Louise shines in the way she supports local communities and individuals by making space for ad hoc events, humanitarian fundraisers, up and coming chefs and food and drink talent in e5's arches.
Andy Swinscoe
Andy Swinscoe is a cheese expert, communicator, Affineur and owner of the Courtyard Dairy in Austwick, North Yorkshire. Each farmhouse cheese in Britain is a unique food: closely tied to landscape, history and skill. They are also increasingly rare, and often endangered foods. As one of the most knowledgeable, engaging and proactive experts in this area, Andy Swinscoe would be a worthy recipient of a Food Hero Award. As a successful cheesemonger he has built up a business that’s become an important platform for farmhouse producers to sell cheese and tell their story. This has become a lifeline for the many small family farms he works with, but it goes much further. From opening a museum telling the history of cheese, through to organising experimental collaborations of cheesemakers and advising farmers how to improve the quality of what they do, Andy is adding much needed energy and innovation to one of most important and delicious foods in the UK.
Simon Wright
Simon Wright is the founder and director of Cegin Y Bobl (The People’s Kitchen), a charity based in Carmarthenshire, Wales that runs transformational food education programmes, developed by some of Wales’ best cooks, growers and food experts. Named Food Ambassador for Wales in 2010, Simon is a key member of Food Policy Alliance Cymru and advises Government on food policy. He has run award-winning restaurants in Wales for over 30 years, was former Editor of the AA Restaurant Guide, and worked as a Restaurant Consultant for all the UK episodes of Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. Simon’s role in developing the Cook24 programme laid the groundwork for Cegin Y Bobl, which is already garnering significant media attention across the UK, despite only launching in 2024, and developing a reputation for facilitating exceptional, transformative food experiences for those it serves.
Tilly Robinson-Miles
Tilly Robinson-Miles has long been a well-respected voice advocating for older people. She has worked for legislative and societal change on the importance of food throughout life. As part of the Eat Well Age Well project her work led to a commitment by the Public Health Minister for Scotland on tackling malnutrition. As Policy Manager for the Scottish charity Food Train she played a central role in ensuring the relationship between access to food, social care and mental wellbeing, particularly for older people, is recognised in legislation. Now as part of the Living Good Food Nation Lab at the University of Edinburgh she is leading the lab's work with partners across the food system to ensure this legislation truly creates a Good Food Nation for all. Sadly, older people are often overlooked within society, but Tilly’s past and present work means older people’s food experiences are increasingly recognised in food policy and food systems transformation work.
Vote here for the Food Season Food Hero Award.
Food Season & Vittles Food Stories Fellowship Prize
A collaboration between the British Library Food Season and the ground-breaking Vittles magazine, this prize will be awarded to someone who needs to use the Library's unique food collections to inform a piece of exciting new writing on some aspect of contemporary food or drink culture. From cookery manuscripts, to published cookery books, oral histories, to market research to food magazines and trade literature, food is found across every area of the British Library's extensive collections.
If you have a fascinating and significant food story to tell that would be transformed by a few weeks of using the British Library's collections, and editorial support from the Vittles team, we urge you to apply for the 2025 Food Stories Fellowship Award. The winner will be awarded £1500 to facilitate use of the Library's collections, have access to British Library curatorial support, be mentored by editors at Vittles and will have their finished article published in the magazine. The winner will be paid a publishing fee for their finished article.
Apply for the Food Season & Vittles Food Stories Fellowship Prize
Food Season Food on Display Award
This will celebrate a community gallery, exhibition, museum or library for the most innovative, engaging and exciting deployment of food in online or on-site exhibitions. Food does not need to be the sole focus of any given exhibition, but an entry must use food to tell stories, explore cultural histories, or to highlight social or sustainability challenges. Entrants will be asked to describe how food has been used to engage audiences, tell stories and create impact. Entrants will also be required to provide images of the exhibition. Eligibility for entry for this award applies to exhibitions in small-to-medium-sized institutions, taking place between 1st January and 31st December 2024.The winning organisation will receive a prize of £1000.
Apply for the Food Season Food on Display Award
Food Season Narrative Cookery Book Award
This will celebrate a recipe book with a narrative focus that showcases the power of food and its relation to cooking, stories, histories and cultures . This book will be innovative and interesting, going beyond cooking itself to connect food to the wider world. The book may explore, for example, how food intersects with the cultures of a changing planet, or may highlight hidden food histories or underexplored food communities. Entries for this award must be for books published in the United Kingdom or Republic of Ireland between 1st January and 31st December 2024. This award’s winning author will receive a prize of £500.
Apply for the Food Season Narrative Cookery Book Award
Food Season 2025 is sponsored by Miele
The Food Season & Vittles Food Stories Fellowship Prize is supported by Vittles