Program maker Tim Hofman and his team have won the Issue Award 2019. Hofman just received the prize during the Issue Congress in De Balie in Amsterdam. In November last year, Hofman took the initiative to file a petition for a broader Children's Pardon following his #BOOS documentary 'Back to your own country'. The citizens' initiative was signed more than 100,000 times within a day and was the talk of the town in many media for days. “Tim Hofman has shown that it is inhumane to send children born and rooted in the Netherlands back to the country of their parents, where they do not even speak the language. The debate about the Children's Pardon will never be the same after the 'Back to your own country' campaign,” said jury member Reint Jan Renes (behavioral scientist at Utrecht University of Applied Sciences).
Other nominees for the prize were Michael Kulkens, who lost his son Tommy-Boy in a traffic accident and who has since successfully campaigned against texting in traffic, and lawyer Bénédicte Ficq and pulmonologist Wanda de Kanter, who are fighting with campaigns and a legal procedure against tobacco addiction.
Arjen Lubach receives Issue Oeuvre Award
Arjen Lubach also won prizes. Today he was rewarded with an Issue Oeuvre Award. Lubach received the prize in appreciation of his work as a comedian and program maker, in which, according to the jury, he is repeatedly and humorously able to create broad social and political attention for issues. “Well-known examples are the items about the TTIP trade agreement, which suddenly made everyone know what this trade agreement was about, the drag law, which gave the initiators sufficient support for their referendum request, and the item about nuclear energy, which made nuclear energy a possible solution for discussion again. But other issues such as rush hour charges, Groninger gas or the implementation of public broadcasting were also discussed. The jury is pleased to present Lubach with its first Issue Oeuvre Award.” The oeuvre prize was awarded for the first time this year to mark the tenth anniversary of the Issue Award.
About the Issue Award
The Issue Award is a communications professional prize and is a reward for successfully putting social issues on the agenda. Initiators who are eligible for the prize have succeeded in putting an issue on the social and/or political agenda in the previous year. When making the selection, the jury pays attention to criteria such as social impact, relevance, resistance encountered, originality and personal drive. The prize is an initiative of communications agency De Issuemakers and was awarded for the tenth time this year.
Jury
The professional jury of the Issue Award consists of chairman Frits Wester (political journalist RTL), vice-chairman Reint Jan Renes (Lector of Crossmedia Communication in the Public Domain at Utrecht University of Applied Sciences), Marjan Olfers (special professor of sport and law at the VU), Kemal Rijken (writer and publicist of research articles and non-fiction books, including 'Van der Laan, biography of a mayor'), Sigrid Verweij (communications director at VNO-NCW), Liesbeth Breeveld (head of communications at the SER), Rob de Lange ( author and general reporter at the Financieele Dagblad) and Andre Manning (director of Logeion, the professional organization for communication professionals).
Previous winners
In recent years, the Issue Award went to the educational action group PO in Actie for the way in which workload and salary problems in Primary Education are put on the agenda (2018), to Hugo Borst and Carin Gaemers for the issue 'Quality of elderly care' (2017), to Young & United (FNV) for the abolition of the minimum youth wage (2016), to Boyan Slat for his sustainability initiative “The Ocean Cleanup” (2015), to Quincy Gario and Pietitie.nl for the Zwarte Pieten Discussion (2014), to Stichting Wakker Dier for the 'Plofkip campaign' (2013), Mauro's foster parents for the 'Young asylum seekers' issue (2012), to Youp van 't Hek for his campaign against customer-unfriendly helpdesks (2011) and to Oxfam Novib for the Groene Sint campaign (2010).
