Could YOUR town and YOUR project be a winner in the 2009 National Market Town Awards?

Last year, the national winner was not a chocolate-box-pretty town, but two former pit villages near Sheffield. Kiveton Park & Wales scooped the award for an innovative project which uses e-bay to raise funds for community projects.

Kiveton Park & Wales were one of 150 projects from a diverse group of towns throughout England, from traditional market towns to former mill towns. The projects varied from community centres to restoring wasteland, from boosting local business to creating green energy, from creating a new town vision to creating artificial snow to boost Christmas shopping.

What they all have in common is that they involved hard work by local volunteers working in partnership.

Now Action for Market Towns, working with Regional Development Agencies and Regional Market Town Forums, is seeking nominations for the 2009 National Market Town Awards. The awards are in association with the international news agency The Press Association as media partners. 
The awards start at regional level – each of the eight English regions has a heat to find winners in four categories:

• Business and Economy
• Environment and Culture
• Social and Community
• Partnership and Strategic Working  

and then an overall regional winner. The regional winners go head-to-head at the Action for Market Towns annual convention in Melton Mowbray on 13 and 14 October to decide the overall national winning project.

The National Market Town Awards are a chance for you to shout from the rooftops about the work you are doing in your town and act as an inspiration to other towns. Your town does not have to be a member of Action for Market Towns to enter a project.

Click here to get inspiration from last year’s regional winners. Could your town and your project be up there in 2009?

We have a special application pack for each region: click on your region on the right to download detailed guidance notes and an application form. ALL APPLICATIONS MUST BE SUBMITTED BY E-MAIL. The closing date is May 22, 2009.