A ‘powerful’ essay on knife crime by a sixth form student mentored through a Sussex writing programme has been announced as one of the Senior Winners of the 2020 Orwell Youth Prize. Jessica Tunks, a student from City and Islington College in London who participated in Writing Wrongs, a collaboration between the University of Sussex, Stuart Hall Foundation and the Orwell Youth Prize, was mentored by Sussex Stuart Hall Fellow Rebecca Omonira-Oyekanmi to develop her winning entry, ‘Knifepoint’.

For the programme, Rebecca, an acclaimed investigative journalist, worked with students from Oriel High School in Crawley, City and Islington College in London and Varndean College in Brighton on a series of writing workshops around the theme of social justice. The workshops were aimed at students underrepresented in higher education and journalism. Rebecca also led a team of Sussex students and academics to facilitate workshops developing the students’ stories. A selection received feedback and were entered into the Orwell Youth Prize.

Jessica Tunks who is a winner in the Senior category of the Prize, said of the experience: "The workshops with Rebecca were incredibly insightful. Hearing about her experience with journalism and all the work she's done was really interesting and inspiring. Rebecca helped us all a lot throughout the process, with sources, as well as detailed guidance on how to research and structure our writing. It was also really useful to be able to discuss the work with the other students in the workshops, as I felt really supported, and it was nice to hear about their own work. I found the workshops really useful and thoroughly enjoyed them."

Jessica’s win is even more notable as the Orwell Youth Prize received more than quadruple the number of entries in lockdown compared to previous years. In the face of an unprecedented demand for educational resources and engagement, the Orwell Youth Prize transformed into a network of volunteers to enable the charity to meet its offer to young people. 170 volunteers, including academics, editors, PhD students and professional writers and journalists came together from organisations such as Oxford University Press, King’s College London, University College London and the University of Westminster to offer 600 entrants personalised feedback on their drafts and help with the sifting process for judging.

Dr Naaz Rashid who oversees the Stuart Hall Fellowship at the University of Sussex said: 

“It was a privilege for the university to work with Rebecca on these workshops and entries as part of her Stuart Hall Fellowship at Sussex this year. Jessica’s important, compelling entry was the outcome of an engaged, fruitful collaboration in what has turned out to be such a challenging period. Jessica’s win is doubly impressive given the increased competition for the Prize, and very many congratulations are due to her.”

Professor Jean Seaton, Director of the Orwell Foundation, said:

"We were so proud that young people turned to the Prize as a way of saying what was important to them during lockdown. We had to scramble an army of volunteers to give them feedback, fan out to writers and political players to respond to their ideas, as they asked us. Everyone wanted to help because everyone knows these voices tell us things we need to know. And we listened to the wider story the entries told us: we will honour that creativity and bleakness in the coming year."

The seven winning pieces, echoing George Orwell’s own genre-hopping, include short stories, journalistic essays and poetry, were judged by writer Kerry Hudson and poet Kayo Chingonyi.

The full list of this year's Orwell Youth Prize winners are:

Senior Winners

Knifepoint, Jessica Tunks (Journalism)

Streets in the Sky, Rosaleen Tite Ahern (Essay)

How many people does it take to change? (The World), Maya Stokes (Poetry)

What we lost, Lauren Debruin (Short Story)

Junior Winners

Not so welcome break, Tom Finlayson (Short Story)

You are what you eat, Hugh Ludford (Short Story)

To the boy who’s considered my equal, Helen Chick (Poetry)

‘Knifepoint’, along with a Q&A with Jessica, can be read here.