De Montfort University students have been honoured with a prestigious Lifetime Contribution Award by Dave's Leicester Comedy Festival.
The award recognised the long-running, ever-developing efforts of students to work at and promote Europe’s longest-running comedy festival which The Guardian has called “one of the best comedy festivals in the world”.
Director Geoff Rowe, who started the Leicester Comedy Festival as a project when he was studying at DMU, paid the ultimate compliment to students past and present saying: “We simply couldn’t produce the festival without their support”.
De Montfort's BA Arts and Festivals Management students were recognised for running live comedy events around Leicester, in venues ranging from The Criterion and Duffy's Bar to Peter’s Pizzeria.
While students taking the Advanced Radio Production module - across BSc programmes in Media Production, Music Technology, and Audio and Recording Technology – have led the content on De Montfort Students’ Union’s own DemonFM, featuring live comedy guests every weekday across the festival, as well as hours of pre-recorded audio and video interviews broadcast across Leicester.
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Geoff said: “The comedy festival was born when I was studying Arts Management at DMU and we produced the first festival in 1994 as part of our course work.
“Since then the involvement of DMU students has grown and grown and the contribution they now make to the annual event is incredibly important.
“We simply couldn’t produce the festival without their support.
“For many years students have run some of our venues, helping to promote the shows and then running the events each night.
“In recent years things have developed and now students from across the University take part by producing podcasts, a special festival magazine and coverage across Demon Media.
“A few years ago we recognised De Montfort University for Lifetime Contribution but this year we wanted to highlight the contribution students have made over the years. An entire group of students attended the awards ceremony and it was an honour to present students with their trophy.”
BSc Media Production programme leader Simon Walsh, who is module leader for Advanced Radio Production, saw the students receive the award at a glittering ceremony in the Mercure Grand Hotel.
He said: “Since 2008 we have consistently raised the bar on expectation, to the extent that we are now - as DemonFM - the de facto youth radio partner for the Festival in this city, and beyond.
“It gives our students some high-value, real-world experience: liaising with artists, management and venues; covering a real-world event in real-time; and building knowledge and contacts for the future, understanding how these sorts of things really work in industry. Not to mention the perfect opportunity to put legal and compliance considerations to the test, given the nature of the comedian's work!”
The Lifetime Achievement Award has gone on show in the reception at Trinity House.
Posted on Tuesday 22 March 2016