The Portico Library in Manchester is home to The Portico Prize for Literature.

The biennial prize is the UK’s only award for outstanding literature that best evokes ‘the spirit of the North’. Once described as ‘the Booker of the North’, the Prize is open to literature across the formats of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. The Portico Prize was established in 1985 to celebrate the strong regional and literary identity of the North.

The Prize made a return in 2019 having last been awarded in 2015. It skipped a year in 2017 due to the loss of its sponsor. I was appointed to provide strategic prize consultancy to relaunch the Portico Prize and to deliver a year-round PR campaign to raise its regional and national profile.

A co-ordinated and strategic approach was taken to the media campaign to draw on the Prize milestones – from the call for submissions to the winner announcement. This enabled us to generate media coverage at key points throughout the year and to produce a variety of digital content for the Portico Prize’s social channels.

A highlight of the PR campaign was an agenda-setting front cover feature about writers and the North in Observer New Review, with interviews with all six shortlisted writers, supplemented by regional and national news coverage and broadcast interviews.

I was delighted to be appointed to work on a second cycle of the Prize in 2021/2022 to build on this success. Coverage highlights included a panel discussion about northern literature on BBC Radio 4 Front Row; news coverage on BBC Radio 4 Today; an interview on BBC news online and winner news in The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian.

Testimonial

Jane joined the Portico Prize team in 2018 to provide strategic advice on relaunching the award and to deliver an accompanying communications campaign to raise its profile. Her co-ordinated and carefully planned approach led to the 2019 Portico Prize receiving unprecedently levels of media coverage, including an 11-page spread in the Observer’s New Review. The success led us to reappoint Jane to work on the 2021-2 cycle, which elevated the Prize to a broader national audience.

Jane is a calm and clear thinker under pressure and can work quickly to solve the inevitable hitches which arise with any project of this nature. She has a vast array of skills, an impressive network of contacts and is always a delight to work with. We cannot recommend her highly enough and look forward to working with her in the future. Thom Keep / Lynne Allan, The Portico Library

Do you have an arts prize which needs a re-think? Do get in touch.