Love Barrow News – Love Barrow Awards

Where are the Love Barrow Awards?

October 16, 2017 Love Barrow Admin

We’re Still Here!

The Love Barrow Awards nominations will be open in January 2018. We’ve pushed the date back to give us a chance to make some improvements to the awards.

Subscribe to the mailing list and you’ll be the first to know when the Love Barrow Awards nominations open!

The Carpenter and his Saw

It’s sometimes good to pause and look around. It’s easy to get caught in routines and not taking a moment to look at the horizon. Anyone who has suffered from stress or burnout knows that you are allowed to take a breath once in a while. In fact, you have to!

Ever heard of the story of the carpenter and his saw?

When a carpenter first started he could keep cutting through a huge amount of wood. Yet over time, he found that the amount of wood he could cut kept dropping. It worried him.

He worked harder and harder. But the harder he worked the less wood he could cut till eventually he asked a friend what he could do. The friend looked around the carpenter’s workshop and pointed at the saw.

“When is the last time you sharpened your saw?”

The carpenter scratched his head, “but if I sharpen my saw I’m not cutting wood”

“But if you don’t take time to sharpen your saw, you won’t cut the wood as quickly or as easily. It won’t matter how hard you work”, the friend replied.

We’re sharpening our tools and taking some time to look at what we’ve achieved… and where the Awards are going next.

Living up to ‘the Barrow Oscars’

A lot has changed in the 12 years since the first Love Barrow Awards nominations. We’re older than the iPhone!

When we started there only used to be 3 awards. There are now 12! The awards have grown from a small party into a show that is a highlight of the community calendar and we are really proud of the phrase ‘the Barrow Oscars’. We want to live up to that!

There are some exciting plans which we can’t wait to share with you but we’d love to hear about what you think of the Love Barrow Awards. If you have 2 minutes pop over to our Facebook page and leave us a rating out of 5 stars. And if you’ve got time, leave a review about what you think or share a favourite memory connected to the Awards.

Are you passionate about the Love Barrow Awards? Have some spare time and want to help in the community? We are looking for people to get involved to help make the Awards the best it can be.

Let us know via the contact form:
1. That you’re over 18
2. That you are based in Barrow
3. That you want to help in the community
4. What skills and abilities you can contribute

Remember, if you want a reminder when the nominations open in January 2018… subscribe to our mailing list!

UPDATE: The People’s Choice Award and Voting

December 15, 2015 Love Barrow Admin

First off. Wow! In just over 24 hours we have had 1,366 qualified votes… It is very clear that the People’s Choice Award is something that the people of the Barrow Borough want! Thank you all for getting behind the finalists and taking time to vote for them. What isn’t so clear is who is going to win! The voting is very close… very tense as we watch the votes come in at Love Barrow HQ!

However, some people’s enthusiasm has gotten the better of them and they have been voting for the same finalist multiple times. To the extreme! We kept the system as open as possible to allow for multiple votes across the board so people could vote for multiple finalists as well as allow a reasonable amount of multiple votes for individual finalists. We are all used to this style of voting system from ‘X-Factor’ and ‘Strictly’.

In the last 24 hours though we have had a HUGE volume of votes from a few email addresses. This skews the voting results quite badly and turns ‘The People’s Choice’ into ‘The Person’s Choice’ which although doesn’t break any rules, does go against the spirit of the award. As the vote is free there is no limiting factor (such as the cost of a text or phone call in TV voting).

So a few calls have been made to the committee and they have decided to place a cap on multiple votes from the same email. In the interest of preventing any abuse of this cap, we aren’t going to announce what that cap is although rest assured it is a sensible number and if you have already voted multiple times… some of those votes will be counted as long as they are below the cap.

This cap means that every finalist is treated the same, avoiding favouritism while at the same time not completely overturning the hours(!) some people have spent in voting for their favourite finalist.

We want the People’s Choice Award to be fun. We want the finalists to see the community get behind them and show how much of a difference they make. We also want the People’s Choice Award to be fair and based on merit rather than who can vote the most number of times.

Keep voting. Keep sharing. Keep encouraging others to vote. We all know that every finalist deserves recognition and are all worthy winners.

That is what makes them finalists!

[DKB url=”http://goo.gl/forms/9tNU22G3H5″ text=”VOTE NOW” type=”large” width=”175″ color=”#f7b2bf” opennewwindow=”no”]

[ideabox]Remember: If you want to vote please use the voting form, not the comment box or Facebook page![/ideabox]

New Award for 2016: The People’s Choice Award!

December 14, 2015 Love Barrow Admin

Every year the Love Barrow team are asked a simple question:

“How can people vote for the nominee they want to win?”

Until now, we have not been able to answer that question. The nominees for each category are provided by you, the community, and then judged by the voting panel, made up of committee members, previous winners and sponsors. This was a conscious decision, to make the judging about the nominees and the work they do rather than a popularity contest.

Yet it is clear that the community wanted something we were not providing. We take that seriously.

So, we came up with the People’s Choice Award, a new award that is solely chosen by you in addition to the judged categories. We are all really excited by this new award as it is an opportunity for the community to get involved in the judging process. It is a chance for you to get your voice heard to support the nominees you want to win.

The People’s Choice Award is an on line vote, the candidates are the short-listed finalists from each category. The closing date for voting is February 21^st and the winner, decided by the most votes, will be announced on the awards night, March 11^th.

The vote is open to anyone who wants a nominee to win the People’s Choice Award… It doesn’t matter if you are outside the Barrow Borough! If you want a nominee to win the People’s Choice Award you can and should vote for them.

The on line vote is free and you can vote as many times as you want. Each vote is qualified as a ‘real person’ by email.

Many of our local community heroes don’t know how special they are and what a difference they make. They certainly don’t shout about what they do. You can help them by encouraging others to vote by sharing links and the text codes on Facebook and Twitter, supporting the nominee you would like to receive the People’s Choice Award.

You can vote here!

[ideabox]Remember please use the voting form to vote, not the comments box or Facebook page.[/ideabox]

New Look Website and Blog

September 2, 2014 Love Barrow Admin

With the 2015 Love Barrow Awards fast approaching it’s time for a a fresh look to the Love Barrow Awards website especially as 2015 marks the award’s 10th amazing year! We’re starting a new blog to keep people up to date with how the awards are put together as well as important announcements like when nominations are opening. Darren McSweeney, 2014 Citizen of the Year Nominee and long time local issue campaigner will be joining the Love Barrow online team and contributing to the blog.

Darren McSweeney (second from left), along with the 2014 Citizen of the Year Nominees and Winners.